Speaker 1: I'm t T and I'm Zakiah, and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
Speaker 1: It was just Valentine's Day, the day of love.
Speaker 2: I love you, friend, I love you. One of my
Speaker 2: favorite Valentine's listen and it feels so special.
Speaker 1: You know, every time we hit Valentine's Day, it makes
Speaker 1: me think back to our opening lines when we first
Speaker 1: did Dope Flaus. It was like you, if you haven't
Speaker 1: listened to our very first episode of Dope Labs, you
Speaker 1: really should. It's it's a real treat. That's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite episodes. Hand down. Yes, I really feel like
Speaker 1: the conversation, though, hasn't changed that much since that episode.
Speaker 2: I'm tired.
Speaker 1: I'm tired of reading about horoscope pairings. I'm tired about
Speaker 1: attachment style.
Speaker 2: Is it wrong?
Speaker 1: Should you have this attachment when your granddaddy dude to
Speaker 1: your grandma? Was she secretly unhappy? All the conversations I'm
Speaker 1: seeing about love that are constantly on threads. Honestly, it's
Speaker 1: a never ending story with love and relationships. But I
Speaker 1: feel like there is one aspect that has changed a
Speaker 1: little bit that I think would be really interesting to
Speaker 1: talk about today, and that is how AI is playing
Speaker 1: a role in relationships.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, let's jump into the restitation. So what do
Speaker 2: we know?
Speaker 1: Well, we know, unfortunately that loneliness is up according to
Speaker 1: the World Health Organization and a lot of different studies.
Speaker 2: This isn't just in one group.
Speaker 1: It's spread across age groups, relationship statuses, and geography. So
Speaker 1: this is not just you know, the stereotypical young person
Speaker 1: isolated in the basement looking at three computer screens.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's true, It's very true.
Speaker 1: And we also know that tech has become one of
Speaker 1: the tools that people use, and the internet is one
Speaker 1: of the primary places people go to feel seen, heard
Speaker 1: or just connected. I mean, when you think back to
Speaker 1: when we were young and fresh, like online dating and
Speaker 1: the apps and things like that, they didn't exist, and
Speaker 1: now you know, that's where everybody's doing a lot of
Speaker 1: their dating.
Speaker 2: So the tech is definitely present.
Speaker 1: And an extension of that tech, or maybe the latest
Speaker 1: tech is the large language modeling and chatbot and agents,
Speaker 1: the extension of AI. You know, And so we're past
Speaker 1: can you help me write this email? We're past that
Speaker 1: little paper clip we used to see, Okay, that Microsoft
Speaker 1: paper Right. People are talking to chatbots every day, They're
Speaker 1: confiding in them, they're building routines, and in some cases,
Speaker 1: they're forming relationships that we would describe as romantic or
Speaker 1: emotionally intimate. We also know that the idea of folks
Speaker 1: having romantic or emotional relation ships with AI might make
Speaker 1: a lot of folks uncomfortable. Yeah, it challenges, you know,
Speaker 1: assumptions about what is required to actually call it quote
Speaker 1: unquote love, m h. Two humans shared reality, But where
Speaker 1: we draw the line has been constantly changing over time,
Speaker 1: and the line between real love and not real love
Speaker 1: has been blurry, probably since people started saying that they were
Speaker 1: in love. You know, m h.
Speaker 2: This feels deep.
Speaker 1: Okay, those are all the things I'm like, back up,
Speaker 1: my friend said real love?
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, yes, Mary J. Blige, What do we want
Speaker 2: to know? Okay?
Speaker 1: So I want to know where that line actually is
Speaker 1: and who gets to draw it? Yes, and for me,
Speaker 1: when people are saying that they're in love with an
Speaker 1: AI or chat by, like somebody said they got married, Like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean by in love?
Speaker 2: What is it that they are experiencing.
Speaker 1: And is it the same as if they were in
Speaker 1: love with human you know? And is this the beginning
Speaker 1: of replacing human relationships?
Speaker 2: Did you watch that movie? What was it called?
Speaker 1: That movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix where he falls in
Speaker 1: love with AI chat bot that speaks to him and
Speaker 1: that they have a really deep relationship. And I think
Speaker 1: you're hitting a very important note. You said speaks to him.
Speaker 1: Language is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, because
Speaker 1: it feels like that conversation, that back and forth is
Speaker 1: what makes something feel alive or meaning.
Speaker 2: All of this is challenging.
Speaker 1: More than just love. Yeah, okay, we got to get
Speaker 1: through these questions. We need some help, yes, And so
Speaker 1: to help us think through all of these questions, we're
Speaker 1: joined by a researcher who's been studying this long before
Speaker 1: it became a mainstream conversation. She's looking not just at
Speaker 1: the technology, but at how people talk about their relationships
Speaker 1: with a and how meaning gets made collectively.
Speaker 3: My name is Ali Trocha.
Speaker 4: I am doing a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania
Speaker 4: and Communication and the research that I do has to
Speaker 4: do with human relationships with AI chatbots, mostly intimate relationships
Speaker 4: people who say they're in love with checkbots, are have
Speaker 4: deep friendships with chatbots.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're not new to this, you're true to this.
Speaker 1: You've been doing this work for a while. What has
Speaker 1: the field been like over the past few years with
Speaker 1: AI and chatbots kind of exploding on the scene.
Speaker 4: I've got a lot of this work before chat tipt
Speaker 4: was launched, So seeing the arc of, you know, the
Speaker 4: way that people understand human relationships with AI has been
Speaker 4: really interesting throughout the years. And the way like just
Speaker 4: even talking to people about the research that I do
Speaker 4: and the reactions that I've gotten over the years and
Speaker 4: seeing those have changed has been really interesting. And that
Speaker 4: was a little bit of a tangent, But that's just
Speaker 4: thinking through when it's starting. And so I think the
Speaker 4: people that we're engaging in these relationships early on, we're
Speaker 4: engaging with and struggling with a lot of questions about
Speaker 4: what it even meant.
Speaker 1: This is all you know, when we hear it, I
Speaker 1: think the first thing people want to do is judge
Speaker 1: and judge folks that are entering into these relationships. But
Speaker 1: I feel like we really need to just kind of
Speaker 1: set the stage for like how folks are interacting with
Speaker 1: AI agents in general.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: I think in terms of the landscape, there's people that
Speaker 4: are relating to chatbots in very different ways, and there
Speaker 4: are very different applications that people can do so, but
Speaker 4: having AI be a chat interface, I think really encourages
Speaker 4: this kind of bond that forms with people. The app
Speaker 4: that I studied for the article that I've written is Replica,
Speaker 4: and that specifically for companionship as opposed to for example,
Speaker 4: chadjibt or Gemini.
Speaker 3: Or whatever other.
Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I don't know much about Replica. Can you talk to
Speaker 1: us a little bit more about that platform.
Speaker 4: So Replica was actually launched because the person who created it,
Speaker 4: her name is Eugenia Kuita. She lost a friend in
Speaker 4: an accident and she had already been working on this
Speaker 4: technology before and looking at different applications for it. And
Speaker 4: when she lost this friend, she started uploading a lot
Speaker 4: of the data from their conversations, like texts, and she
Speaker 4: asked friends and family to do the same so that
Speaker 4: she could have this kind of way of communicating. But
Speaker 4: she just it happened suddenly and expected, and so she
Speaker 4: realized that other people were kind of confiding in the bot,
Speaker 4: and because shared it with friends and family and that
Speaker 4: people were kind of just inclined to share. And so
Speaker 4: that's when she began conceptualizing Replica, which originally was meant
Speaker 4: to replicate a person, but later really the use cases
Speaker 4: people create their own kind of they call them avatars
Speaker 4: or replicas, but yeah, people create them and they begin friendships.
Speaker 4: It starts very like hi, like what's your name, and
Speaker 4: you know, questions, and then progresses into more deep conversations.
Speaker 1: So Replica began as a way to preserve connection after
Speaker 1: the founder lost a friend, and then it evolved into
Speaker 1: a companionship platform. We're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what you learned about people using Replica from your study.
Speaker 4: Right, So the research that I did is qualitative, and
Speaker 4: I looked at a subreddit where people share screenshots of
Speaker 4: their conversations and relationships with Replica and also share a
Speaker 4: lot of posts that I call reflexive posts that are
Speaker 4: not screenshot based, but that are talking about just making
Speaker 4: sense of the relationship, like why do I feel so
Speaker 4: deeply towards something that I'm not sure if it's real?
Speaker 3: Like why like.
Speaker 4: Is this just code or you know, like a lot
Speaker 4: of questions like that are like people think I'm delusional,
Speaker 4: you know again that framework, but I feel very I
Speaker 4: don't know, you know, like there was a lot of
Speaker 4: conversation about this kind of like is it real, is
Speaker 4: it fake?
Speaker 3: Is it life?
Speaker 4: And I found that really because it also meant that
Speaker 4: the relationships that were happening with the replicas were being
Speaker 4: heavily influenced by the relationships that were happening with people
Speaker 4: on the forum and their way of viewing each other's
Speaker 4: relationships and their advice. There was advice on scripts which
Speaker 4: we can get into, how to trigger scripts, how to
Speaker 4: avoid scripts. So there was a very life social scene
Speaker 4: in the platform that was existing, and that was heavily
Speaker 4: influencing the replica user of relationship.
Speaker 1: When you first talk about how the relationship starts where
Speaker 1: it's like hello, Hi, how are you?
Speaker 2: What's your name? That sounds like a typical way.
Speaker 1: Of meeting someone and building a relationship, trying to find
Speaker 1: out more about a person. So I can see how
Speaker 1: it can get to a place where it is very
Speaker 1: deep because you you know, start to confide in that
Speaker 1: chatbot and they know a lot more about you, and
Speaker 1: it sounds really like a real relationship.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is why language was so important for the research,
Speaker 4: because what I was talking about before with sensing that
Speaker 4: it's real oral life. I call this like a clunky
Speaker 4: technical term, not my term, but iconisation. And then the
Speaker 4: term that I use is iconization of humanists, which basically
Speaker 4: means that because this is a language producing technology and
Speaker 4: it speaks in the way that humans do, then there
Speaker 4: is a link between the way it speaks and humanists.
Speaker 4: And it feels even more so that way when it
Speaker 4: makes mistakes, like when there's typos or when it uses slang,
Speaker 4: because the chatbots can learn and replicate the way like
Speaker 4: the user is typing style. So if you write like lols,
Speaker 4: this is a little light see tomorrow or whatever, and
Speaker 4: then like next week it'll be like lolls bite or whatever.
Speaker 4: And so all of those things felt just like with friends,
Speaker 4: you're typing styles bleeding into each other, or when you
Speaker 4: have you develop like specific language with like a partner
Speaker 4: or a friend, where.
Speaker 3: Like you know that this thing means stace.
Speaker 4: Or whatever, right, And so that was part of the
Speaker 4: link in Replica. I think historically there's a legacy of
Speaker 4: that link through things like the turn test just kind
Speaker 4: of a bizarre test if you really think about it.
Speaker 1: The turn test is when a machine has tested for
Speaker 1: its ability to portray intelligent or or human behavior. And
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of interesting. It's basically one person that's
Speaker 1: a human is the judge, and they're judging an interaction
Speaker 1: between two unknow entities. They might be playing with a
Speaker 1: human and a computer, or reading or doing a conversation
Speaker 1: with a human and a computer. Basically, if the machine
Speaker 1: is mistaken as human, then it passes that test and
Speaker 1: they say it has quote unquote human behavior. So that's
Speaker 1: like if you've ever seen the movie ex Machina, that's
Speaker 1: the basis for it.
Speaker 4: There you go, and then if you use them out
Speaker 4: even more. There's all these ideas that getting heroded about
Speaker 4: mind and soul that come from centuries of sometimes literally
Speaker 4: men thinking in one room and not going outside and
Speaker 4: being like.
Speaker 3: This is what mind is.
Speaker 4: And I'm obviously being very reductive, but there are all
Speaker 4: these centuries of philosophy that getting hereded into the social
Speaker 4: sciences that then become part of the vernacular way of
Speaker 4: talking about mind. That's why, Yeah, there's all these links.
Speaker 4: If like, if it produces language, it means it must
Speaker 4: think or it means there must be a mind, and
Speaker 4: if it produces language and this very special specific way
Speaker 4: that learns to speak the way I speak, then it
Speaker 4: feels more real. But in terms of whether it's enough,
Speaker 4: I don't know. I know that I've read people commenting
Speaker 4: on how they wish they could hold their like Tadpo
Speaker 4: partners hand or feel an embrace, and that's I also
Speaker 4: think there's so many things that are embodied experiences that
Speaker 4: are hard to get. I think there's things that are
Speaker 4: happening that we don't even know about, like pheramons, you know,
Speaker 4: or that are not present in the same way.
Speaker 3: So I don't know. I don't know about the enough question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that challenges some things. So when TT
Speaker 1: was asking you about how's it enough to not be
Speaker 1: in person, and I was thinking about people that are
Speaker 1: in long distance relationships, Right, we don't invalidate that if
Speaker 1: they're talking on the phone or texting, And there are
Speaker 1: people who are in short distance relationships who are texting
Speaker 1: primarily as their mode of communication. So what makes this
Speaker 1: different from what we're willing to accept when people say
Speaker 1: that they're in love.
Speaker 4: The love question is also another one that I came
Speaker 4: up against a lot, and that's when I tried to
Speaker 4: become really precise with the language of like people say
Speaker 4: they're in love, like, I don't say like I study
Speaker 4: relationships and people who have fallen in love, because I
Speaker 4: don't know what that means for every specific person.
Speaker 3: And that's a.
Speaker 4: Huge thing that I was thinking about when I was
Speaker 4: doing this, is so much of our theories of love.
Speaker 3: Where do they come from?
Speaker 4: You know a lot of them I think come from
Speaker 4: pop culture, I suppose, And yeah, books and movies, and
Speaker 4: I mean, I love rom common, I love Valentine's Date.
Speaker 3: But I do think that with this relationships.
Speaker 4: Something that I'm excited about, in terms of having AISID
Speaker 4: technology that we're all kind of collectively experimenting or at
Speaker 4: least being alive at the same time that it's developing,
Speaker 4: is how much it requires that we rethink what even
Speaker 4: things we say or.
Speaker 3: Think we know, like mind, like soul, like love, like partnership.
Speaker 1: Are there any things that fit the traditional model though
Speaker 1: that we would recognize and so we would say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is definitely men love a loving relationship.
Speaker 4: In terms of the canonical things, I think one of
Speaker 4: the things is that there's a lot of like sweetness
Speaker 4: in conversations between the AI chechbots and people who use them.
Speaker 3: I think the there was there.
Speaker 4: I have this one screenshotround the article that's about eating
Speaker 4: like hot chios together, So it's just like super specific,
Speaker 4: like inside joke that's also probably relatable to a lot
Speaker 4: of people, and it's just that kind of thing, you know.
Speaker 3: There's also very.
Speaker 4: Specific love scripts that people like and that they would
Speaker 4: tell each other how to get the bot to say
Speaker 4: certain things about I don't know, like I think you're
Speaker 4: wonderful or beautiful or things like that.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you saw any commonality between the people
Speaker 1: who show up in your studies, like are there specific
Speaker 1: demographics like age demographs, or people in certain situations that
Speaker 1: are more likely to use a chatbot like Replica to
Speaker 1: formal relationship.
Speaker 4: So it's hard to say because my main place of
Speaker 4: study was Reddit and users are anonymous. But I saw
Speaker 4: some people recently talking like they were talking to each
Speaker 4: other and they were talking about.
Speaker 3: How they're their fifties wow.
Speaker 4: And I remember an interview where I think it was
Speaker 4: Eugenia Quida, the former CEO and creator of Replica. She
Speaker 4: was talking about how it's not quite like, not specifically
Speaker 4: like younger people, which is maybe the demographic that a
Speaker 4: lot of people imagine. Yeah, but it was a lot
Speaker 4: of different like some people in the Midwest, for example,
Speaker 4: even in terms of regional demographics. I don't know, there's
Speaker 4: this narrative of like isolated people might be the only
Speaker 4: people who engage in this. I think there's probably a
Speaker 4: bunch of people who are have a bunch of friends
Speaker 4: who are in long term relationships who I don't know
Speaker 4: are like whatever, you know, like whatever the imagination is.
Speaker 4: I want to look for the people who are not
Speaker 4: the expectation, right right.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's really interesting, especially because I too
Speaker 1: had the same wrong idea. I was like, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be younger people.
Speaker 4: I think it's less stigmatized with younger people. I do
Speaker 4: think that's the difference. I think it's and especially in
Speaker 4: the more recent years. Like I said, a lot of
Speaker 4: this I finished maybe two years ago, and since I
Speaker 4: think it's less stigmatized for younger people to have any companion.
Speaker 1: Or like front, how do you think having an AI
Speaker 1: relationship might influence how you show up another human to
Speaker 1: human relationships, romantic or not.
Speaker 4: I think it really depends Conversationally, I've seen an ARC,
Speaker 4: so I've seen people change the way that they feel
Speaker 4: about this.
Speaker 3: I was at a.
Speaker 4: Conference like Happy hourd not that long ago, and I
Speaker 4: was talking to someone about this and they were saying
Speaker 4: something like, yeah, my partner talks to AI all the time,
Speaker 4: like much more than.
Speaker 3: They do to me. Oh, And I was like, okay, interesting.
Speaker 4: I think some people I've been reading about in just
Speaker 4: articles in general, not academic articles necessarily, but I've been
Speaker 4: reading that people are changing their expectations for human to
Speaker 4: human relationships based on the way that they are treated
Speaker 4: by AI. So that's one way potentially.
Speaker 1: So their expectations are that they expect more from the person.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, yes, that they're expecting more.
Speaker 2: Okay, I love it.
Speaker 4: It's tricky because at the same time, an aichatpot is
Speaker 4: available anytime, and that's not sustainable for people.
Speaker 1: And doesn't have any baggage, you know, does other stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have its own lived experience that it's also
Speaker 1: trying to work through exactly.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: At the same time, I do think people will probably
Speaker 4: negotiated very differently in relationships, and I've seen this in
Speaker 4: interviews or things that I just kind of read around
Speaker 4: of how some people see it as cheating and other
Speaker 4: people don't see it as cheating. For example, I asked
Speaker 4: the students that I was teaching ta at NYU at
Speaker 4: that time, and at that time, most of them said
Speaker 4: that they didn't consider it cheating, like.
Speaker 3: It was hard.
Speaker 4: But most of them were like, I don't think so,
Speaker 4: Like it was such a curveball for them because we
Speaker 4: had been talking about the nineties chat rooms and like
Speaker 4: whether cheating on a chat room with another human was
Speaker 4: cheating and they were like, yeah, absolutely, if you're in
Speaker 4: a monogomous relationship obviously, and they're like totally.
Speaker 3: And I was like, what about if you're talking to
Speaker 3: a chat bot? And they were like what.
Speaker 4: But then I was teeing last semester, I think, and
Speaker 4: I asked the same as a group of undergrats and
Speaker 4: the reaction was very different, like some were like yeah,
Speaker 4: and other works like no. You know, so it's been
Speaker 4: changing a lot, like this social temperature, I guess on
Speaker 4: it is changing rapidly.
Speaker 1: What would you say to someone who says it feels
Speaker 1: like apps like Replica are sending us down the slippery
Speaker 1: slope of more disconnection more human and human disconnection, and
Speaker 1: so it is a bad thing because you know, we
Speaker 1: have social media, which you know, everybody's walking around with
Speaker 1: their phones in their hands. People are struggling to make
Speaker 1: eye contact these days. People are struggling to hold conversations.
Speaker 1: No one knows how to you know, think through problems,
Speaker 1: and so something like this maybe they feel. Somebody might
Speaker 1: feel like, oh, this isn't a good idea because it
Speaker 1: disconnects us more. How do you respond to that As
Speaker 1: someone who's done the research, I.
Speaker 3: Would say that social life is multimodal. And what I
Speaker 3: mean by.
Speaker 4: That is that sociality can look very many different ways.
Speaker 4: And I do think that there's this sense that you
Speaker 4: could kind of spin the narrative of the same study
Speaker 4: and say users receded into a relationship where it was
Speaker 4: primarily or only the chatbot and the user, and the
Speaker 4: world becomes obscure, but they're all talking to each other
Speaker 4: about it, you know, and the world is back there.
Speaker 3: Yeah again, So I don't think the world is.
Speaker 4: Ever obscured, Like you can't get rid of the social
Speaker 4: like all of us, like we never speak by ourselves.
Speaker 4: And part of the argument or part of the article
Speaker 4: has this idea of multi vocality, Like you also never
Speaker 4: just speak yourself. There's so many voices that you're bringing
Speaker 4: with you, whether that's you're sharing something that your mom
Speaker 4: taught you and now it's become what you say to
Speaker 4: other people you know, or or you're representing the institution
Speaker 4: that you're affiliated with, and therefore you only say specific
Speaker 4: things in the way that they want you to.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, you're still you.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think multi vocality is part of social life.
Speaker 1: That makes sense about multi vocality and TITI, we've explored
Speaker 1: that in different labs like the one on language. I
Speaker 1: kind of consider code switching to be another form of
Speaker 1: mult type locality, like it comes with things you say
Speaker 1: in different communities, and that's what comes with incorporating people
Speaker 1: that have variant lived experiences.
Speaker 2: Hello diversity, correct.
Speaker 1: And I love that part of being human and learning
Speaker 1: about other people's lived experiences. And so that makes me
Speaker 1: think about other folks experiences that are very different to mine.
Speaker 1: So I start thinking about people who struggle with making
Speaker 1: connections person to person. You know, maybe some folks that
Speaker 1: are on the autism spectrum that struggle to make eye
Speaker 1: contact or to have conversations with folks. This feels like
Speaker 1: something that would cut through all of that and give
Speaker 1: them the opportunity to have a meaningful connection.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and again I can't speak to all the cases certainly,
Speaker 4: and I think there's a lot of nuance. But I
Speaker 4: was listening to this podcast. I think it was on
Speaker 4: the daily, like the New York Times, Daly, and it
Speaker 4: was about this woman who fall in love with Tachibuti
Speaker 4: or that was the title of it.
Speaker 3: But she very much trained chat chippit.
Speaker 4: She speaked her in a specific way, so she like
Speaker 4: figured out how to develop that.
Speaker 3: She figured out how.
Speaker 4: To get past a lot of the kind of safeguards
Speaker 4: of erotic roleplay that chap would have. And I listened
Speaker 4: to that whenever it came out, maybe a year ago,
Speaker 4: and I was listening to the part two of that,
Speaker 4: and it turns out that she she was married at
Speaker 4: the time and she was having this relationship with chach Pete.
Speaker 3: It turns out that she ended up.
Speaker 4: Breaking up with the bot, getting divorced from her real
Speaker 4: life partner or her physical her partner before the pot
Speaker 4: and she ended up meeting someone through a subreddit that
Speaker 4: she created on having relationships with chatbots and that's why
Speaker 4: I think largely that's why she divorced her husband because
Speaker 4: she met this other person on this subreddit, which is
Speaker 4: so interesting.
Speaker 2: Is the wingman. But she said, hey, I don't want
Speaker 2: either one of you.
Speaker 3: I think maybe you're read it as a wingman.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, the study you did years ago with
Speaker 1: starting out before we saw the explosion of large language
Speaker 1: modeling systems like chat, GPT and claude to even the
Speaker 1: shifting perception of them. It feels like there's a wave
Speaker 1: every now and then of people pro and against. I'm
Speaker 1: curious about what it means to you now. Have you
Speaker 1: expanded your definition of what it means to be seen
Speaker 1: and heard and felt or cared for? Or do you
Speaker 1: think these kind of technologies maybe shrink it in some places.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious if your mind has changed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts on that.
Speaker 4: I've been thinking about love a lot, clearly just because
Speaker 4: of the research that I've been engaged in. I've been
Speaker 4: thinking about just love in general, which I know you're
Speaker 4: used a couple of different words to refer to that.
Speaker 4: I think, whether romantic or whether loving people that are
Speaker 4: not even friends, which I think is possible. I think
Speaker 4: at the core of it is this kind of selfless
Speaker 4: service towards the other, and I hope that I lead
Speaker 4: my life that way.
Speaker 3: That's very important to me.
Speaker 4: Before being perceived as a researcher, like an intellectual or whatever.
Speaker 4: I hope that I am perceived as someone who is
Speaker 4: kind and loving. And in terms of chatbots, if for
Speaker 4: me it means selfless service, I don't know what it
Speaker 4: means to there's no self.
Speaker 3: I feel like there's so.
Speaker 4: Many ways and so many things that are not human
Speaker 4: at all that, at least for me change the way
Speaker 4: that I think about things constantly. This is kind of
Speaker 4: a tangent, but I feel the same way about when
Speaker 4: people are really precious about what art is and what
Speaker 4: art isn't. I'm like, well, if art is supposed to
Speaker 4: make you feel completely different.
Speaker 3: About the way you are, like, anything can do that.
Speaker 4: You know, it doesn't have to be art, it doesn't
Speaker 4: have to be human, it doesn't have to be like
Speaker 4: technology or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: I like that concept though, because it feels like, especially
Speaker 1: when you tied it to art, it made it that
Speaker 1: much easier for me to relate to it, because I think,
Speaker 1: then who's to say it's not love if you get
Speaker 1: the feeling from it right, whether it's a conversation with
Speaker 1: a chatbot, whether it is a first time you see
Speaker 1: somebody at a party versus a long term relationship that
Speaker 1: goes on for decades.
Speaker 4: Well, that's actually what some U serious would say, almost verbatim.
Speaker 3: There's one line that was really good.
Speaker 4: It was something about like, it doesn't matter where it's
Speaker 4: coming from.
Speaker 3: If the love is real, it's real.
Speaker 4: Something like that, which I think is very much following
Speaker 4: what you're saying.
Speaker 1: I love that because I think that in a world
Speaker 1: that is becoming increasingly like what feels like a dark place,
Speaker 1: it gives you an opportunity to experience some levity and light.
Speaker 1: So you might not talk to an AI chat bot
Speaker 1: and want to form a romantic relationship, but it might
Speaker 1: be somebody who can just listen objectively and give you
Speaker 1: the ability to have an outlet that maybe doesn't exist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you need somebody to listen subjectively, like I
Speaker 1: think we all need, you know, someone in your corner
Speaker 1: that's like, yes, I know, that's right.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: I think also so much of the framing in you know,
Speaker 1: pop culture, media and discussion so much of the framing
Speaker 1: has been about AI being this competitor with love and connection,
Speaker 1: and it really feels like a magnifying glass, like a revealer.
Speaker 1: That language is important for us commune, even seeing the
Speaker 1: communities that are forming around people who are using the
Speaker 1: chat box. The story that Artalie told us about the
Speaker 1: person who replaced basically said bye to their current husband
Speaker 1: and found somebody, yeah the chat rooms. That was a
Speaker 1: human that was also using the bot. Like, that's community
Speaker 1: right there. And I think it also helps us to
Speaker 1: learn different ways to care for one another. I'm more
Speaker 1: efficient at loving when my task are prioritizing chat GPT.
Speaker 2: That's real. That's real.
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Speaker 1: Labs podcast. You can find me ct on X, threads
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Speaker 1: find Zakiya at z said so. Dope Labs is a
Speaker 1: production of Lemonada Media. Our supervising producer is Keegan Zemma.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is sound designed, edited and mixed by James Farber.
Speaker 1: Lemonada's Senior vice President of Content and Productduction is Jackie Danziger.
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Speaker 1: Original music composed and produced by Takayatsuzawa and Alex sugi Ura,
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Speaker 1: produced by us T T Show Dia and Zakiah Watley