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Ex-Google CEO warns that 'perfect' AI girlfriends could spell trouble for young men
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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I have been saying for a while, I think hyperealistic vr and believable AI personalities are going to be the 'great filter' that limits advanced civilization.
Given the chance to have your sexual and emotional fantasies fulfilled in a satisfying way, many many people will take it. Especially when 'real life' is getting harder with everything from the cost of living making the dream of 'married with home and children' less obtainable to hyper competitive online dating disenfranchising increasing proportions of both men and women.
Having a believable relationship with AI is far closer than we think. It doesn't have to perfectly replicate real life, it just has to be satisfying enough in a few key ways that people begin to prefer it.
Spending all time dating AI partners means that we have achieved labor post scarcity. If labor post scarcity isn't achieved, then it means you have to do a job to survive (like now), thus not spending entire time with AI partners.
Achieving labor post scarcity means that scientific progress too would stop being connected with the economic productivity of individuals. Basically, AI scientists. Scientific progress means expansion of humanity through space.
Therefore, your great filter idea doesn't really hold imo.
Bit of a weird non sequitur
What I'm saying has nothing to do "labour post scarcity"
I'm referring to immersive VR and AI overall contributing to a falling birthrate. If immersive realities become truly immersive, it's reasonable to believe they will occupy leisure time. This has nothing to do with people's relationship to work. They'll still need to be economically active, whether or not this takes place in the VR is neither here nor there.
It's a point about what people will do with their time when they are lonely, want connection, or pleasure. And if VR / AI (whatever other technologies) becomes believable and more satisfying then there's little reason to believe people will continue the "unreliable" tradition of dating. And even less to engage in the mucky and very biological habit of reproducing.
Witness Japanese culture. And then just add 100 years of immersive believable AI personality and sexual fantasy. Do you think that will make people get married and have babies or do you think it will help them being content being single and childless?
Your conclusion is based upon an assumption that we need more humans to progress as society. If AI develops to the point where it is better as a partner than a human being, it likely means that we have achieved, or are very close to achieving labor post scarcity (the assumption being that an AI capable of achieving this is capable enough to do most/all human work).
When we achieve labor post scarcity, the number of humans has nothing to do with progress. Therefore, falling birthrates won't have any negative effect on progress.
When we achieve labor post scarcity in the medical field, life expectancy would increase, with us achieving biological immortality at a certain point. This means, that death rates also go down.
Considering the above, I thought you were referring to "dating and fucking AI partners" as the end of human progress (presumably because of a lack of any motivation to cause any more development). That's what my reply was talking about.
I understand where you're coming from now. Yes I agree. Though I'll add that I'm pretty confident that the sex industry is going to be at the bleeding edge of AI / VR as things progress. At least, I think the bar for making people interested in what an attractive AI has to say rather than another disappointing night on tinder is far lower than automating all human labour. Even if we're talking physical "sexbots" I think, practically speaking, that's more likely to be rudimentary 'equipment' greatly enhanced by augmented VR. Again, far closer to reality than Boston dynamics + son of chatGPT replacing the workforce. My point being that the bar at which young people become disinterested in physical reproduction is far, far lower than a post scarcity society in which all labour is automated. And that's the risk. That we start to have a shortfall in workforce replacement long before we can manage without it.
Hm, makes sense ig. Basically, what u'r saying is this from what I understood - AI romance/sex bots capable of making a significant drop in birth rates would come before AI bots that bring in labor post scarcity.
While I agree with this, I don't think that the time difference between the two events would be significant enough for the drop in birth rate to be that damaging. Why? Because I'm assuming that development in AI would be that fast. I can't think of many reasons as to why tech that makes it possible to serve as a good enough romantic partner (which is quite a complex task) can't serve as a mental health therapist (with different fine tuning of course), customer service, retail, admin, secretary, etc.
One doesn't need to replace 100% of jobs to cause unemployment related issues in the market. I think the effects of unemployment would be seen first before the effects of potentially dropping birth rates.
Let's hope so!