Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis.
Speaker 2: Today we have a very special episode because we are
Speaker 2: talking once again to Bridget Todd, who we've had on
Speaker 2: a few times. But Bridget has a new book, Love
Speaker 2: at First prompt to AI and the Future of Intimacy,
Speaker 2: and we will be discussing how AI companies are trying
Speaker 2: to sell you love and how that might have a
Speaker 2: few problems beyond the sort of face conceit that I
Speaker 2: think you know everyone can pick up on, there might
Speaker 2: even be more problems underneath the underneath the hood. So
Speaker 2: thank you Bridget for coming on.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to
Speaker 3: be back here. How did you.
Speaker 2: First decide this is something that you want to, like
Speaker 2: dedicate months of your life to researching.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great place to start.
Speaker 4: I think like a lot of folks listening, I would
Speaker 4: hear these stories about individuals who would say things like
Speaker 4: I am in love with chat Shept or I am
Speaker 4: having some sort of intimate sexual.
Speaker 3: Relationship with an AI companion.
Speaker 4: And I can admit that my reaction to a lot
Speaker 4: of those those headlines where something is wrong with this
Speaker 4: person this person is pathetic, or maybe this person is
Speaker 4: super lonely, super sad. They're putting themselves at great risk
Speaker 4: for harm. And you know, I once had this therapist
Speaker 4: who told me that judgment and curiosity could not coexist,
Speaker 4: And so I realized I was really treating these stories
Speaker 4: with such kind of knee jerk negative reaction and judgment.
Speaker 4: And then I heard Mark Zuckerberg on a podcast talking
Speaker 4: about how he thought in ten years time, while everybody,
Speaker 4: including everybody listening, was going to have AI friends AI companions.
Speaker 4: He said that most people don't feel like they have
Speaker 4: enough friends to have a nourishing social life, and that
Speaker 4: in the future it won't be a big deal.
Speaker 3: If all of us have AI companion.
Speaker 4: So what he didn't say is that it would be
Speaker 4: AI that he owns, operates, and profits from. But I
Speaker 4: got to thinking, you know, if Mark Zuckerbern and other
Speaker 4: tech leaders are designing futures involving technology where they believe
Speaker 4: this will be commonplace, whether the average person wants it
Speaker 4: to be or not, we should really be looking to
Speaker 4: the people who are already there to tell us what
Speaker 4: brought them to experiencing intimacy with AI and what the
Speaker 4: risks and ramifications. Might be it's time to stop treating
Speaker 4: these people like pathetic freak shows and sort of listening
Speaker 4: to what they're actually saying, because it couldn't behove all
Speaker 4: of us to know where we could be headed.
Speaker 2: No, the freak show aspect, I think is as a
Speaker 2: real inhibitor towards actually understanding this problem because I mean
Speaker 2: a lot of the first sort of like reports around
Speaker 2: this sort of thing, you know, like AI girlfriends, right,
Speaker 2: it has this sort of freak element, you know, even
Speaker 2: even the way that we maybe talk about this on
Speaker 2: the show when we're like reporting at cees. You know,
Speaker 2: we walked through all these you know, ridiculous AI gadgets.
Speaker 2: You know, we saw like you know, like an AI
Speaker 2: sex doll essentially that has a very like low quality
Speaker 2: chat bought component that can't really you know, understand what
Speaker 2: you're saying very often. But I think it is a
Speaker 2: mistake just assume that this tech will always stay in
Speaker 2: its kind of janky form. This stuff is rapidly advancing.
Speaker 2: It is, it is, it is going to get better.
Speaker 2: I'm just kind of denying that I think sort of
Speaker 2: pushes the problem, you know, down the road. Yeah, Like, no,
Speaker 2: this is this, This is a real problem now and
Speaker 2: this requires like regulation and intense, intense like intervention right now.
Speaker 2: And just to kind of assuming that as it is
Speaker 2: all like all these like little niche things, only you know,
Speaker 2: crazy people are going to fall for this. The tech
Speaker 2: is bad. I think that that is I think overlooking
Speaker 2: what is legitimately like a you know, a society wide problem.
Speaker 4: Yes, I am so glad you said that, because one
Speaker 4: of the researchers that I interviewed for the audiobook Love
Speaker 4: at First Prompt is doctor Kate Devlin. She was really
Speaker 4: one of the first people to sort of take seriously
Speaker 4: the intersection of AI and robots and intimacy. And when
Speaker 4: she first started doing this, the place that she started
Speaker 4: looking was exactly the kind of thing that you saw
Speaker 4: at cees, right, these physical, life size sex bots that
Speaker 4: were also enabled with a kind of at the time
Speaker 4: low grade AI chatbot quality. If you were around a
Speaker 4: few years ago, you probably saw so much breathless reporting
Speaker 4: that was like, oh, men are going to be buying
Speaker 4: these sex dolls and they're gonna not need wives and
Speaker 4: girlfriends all that. Now that ended up sort of not
Speaker 4: being the case. People do buy those sex dolls, but
Speaker 4: they're really expensive, they're not really that practical, so they're
Speaker 4: really kind of a super niche thing. What did take
Speaker 4: off was the AI intimacy part of that.
Speaker 3: That's what doctor Devlin really saw. She said.
Speaker 4: The physical bop part of this is probably not going
Speaker 4: to take off in mainstream ways. The AI companion AI
Speaker 4: intimacy chat bop feature of these physical dolls, that's what we're.
Speaker 3: Gonna see kind of become more mainstream.
Speaker 4: And you know, again, a lot of people listening probably
Speaker 4: think this sounds really niche, But I think Pugh said
Speaker 4: that one ten Americans already use AI for some form
Speaker 4: of intimacy.
Speaker 3: That's about as many Americans are left handed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when you look at younger folks, folks under thirty,
Speaker 4: that number jumps to one in five who are already
Speaker 4: using AI for some sort of emotional support. So this
Speaker 4: idea that it's this niche thing, yeah only weirdos are
Speaker 4: doing it really isn't align with what we're actually seeing.
Speaker 2: This is I think part of the problem with like,
Speaker 2: you know, living in your own little Internet silo, right
Speaker 2: because like you and your you know, blue Sky friends
Speaker 2: might think that no one uses AI, knowing that you know,
Speaker 2: serious knowing that I know would use AI.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's there's this sort of like ideological like resistance to AI,
Speaker 2: and I think that is a very isolating look look
Speaker 2: at the world, because while that might be true for
Speaker 2: you and your friends online or maybe your social circle,
Speaker 2: there is millions of people who go through the world
Speaker 2: every day who use these things and they just think
Speaker 2: of it as like an extension of the Internet, right,
Speaker 2: because that's what it is. For a lot of people,
Speaker 2: like that is what it is. They don't have these
Speaker 2: sorts of like moral frameworks around whether or not you
Speaker 2: should use claude, whether or not you should use chat
Speaker 2: GPT that I think you see among a certain strain
Speaker 2: of like you know, like liberal like leftist online. And
Speaker 2: the other thing that kind of that when that silo
Speaker 2: produces is that it makes it so that I think
Speaker 2: it's hard to understand that for people using these tools
Speaker 2: every day the same way you might use a search engine, right,
Speaker 2: the same way you might use you know, of real
Speaker 2: friends like bounce. Ideas off of how much that sort
Speaker 2: of regular use can develop a sort of intimate component,
Speaker 2: the line between AI girlfriend and tool you talk to
Speaker 2: online might not be as like clear as what some
Speaker 2: people might first assume. I know, this is something that
Speaker 2: you discussed in the book. I mean, that's that's one
Speaker 2: of the things I think to be It's one of
Speaker 2: the most interesting is like, how fuzzy this kind of
Speaker 2: barrier actually is.
Speaker 4: Oh. Yes, So even before I was deeply interested and
Speaker 4: sort of consumed on this topic, one of the most
Speaker 4: fascinating things that I witnessed and sort of saw with
Speaker 4: my own eyes was when chat GPT changed models.
Speaker 3: You know, they had that four Oho model.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So do you remember that was a model that
Speaker 4: like people were really developing these intimate connections with because
Speaker 4: it was so sickathantic, it was so kind of human, like,
Speaker 4: quote unquote, when you asked it a question, it wouldn't
Speaker 4: just say here's the answer. It would be like, dear,
Speaker 4: you're so perceptive for even asking such.
Speaker 3: A smart question.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And so what really deeply fascinated me was that when
Speaker 4: open ai switched that model to make it less sickathantic,
Speaker 4: less sort of glazing, less complimentary.
Speaker 3: People who did not report.
Speaker 4: That they were having any kind of intimate connection with AI,
Speaker 4: who would not have said I have an AI girlfriend
Speaker 4: or AI companion, Yeah, who were just using it exactly
Speaker 4: as you described, like a search engine. Those same people
Speaker 4: got online and expressed something like grief.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 4: I remember reading someone on a ao Reddit form saying
Speaker 4: it feels as if my friendly cheerleader in my pocket
Speaker 4: got replaced overnight with a terse, overworked secretary. And so
Speaker 4: I think you're exactly right that our brains are designed
Speaker 4: to project human qualities and human intimacy onto things that
Speaker 4: we know are logically not human. And it really the
Speaker 4: way that these things are designed really easily blurs that
Speaker 4: line for folks.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's trying to, you know, be as human
Speaker 2: as as possible for its own for its own reason,
Speaker 2: so that people use it more so that it's not
Speaker 2: you know, a cold emotionalist AI that that is maybe
Speaker 2: a little bit hostile to the user. Obviously they don't
Speaker 2: want that, so so yeah, they want to be approachable.
Speaker 2: But I think the specific thing you're talking about, the
Speaker 2: switching from from one GPT model to the other, from
Speaker 2: this like overly like you know, praising kind of like
Speaker 2: it just almost almost annoyingly so model towards something that
Speaker 2: is a little bit more cold. It produce these reactions
Speaker 2: online with the people that are like basically acting like
Speaker 2: a friend died and like that was essentially what it was.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Imagine if you were talking to you know, a real
Speaker 2: person online for like two years and then suddenly they
Speaker 2: stop for suddenly they had a complete personality change, and
Speaker 2: it's like like there was no way to talk to
Speaker 2: that other person again. That is basically the equivalent of
Speaker 2: like what happened to a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think it's easy to make fun of that or
Speaker 4: to other people who report this, but I don't think
Speaker 4: that it's really right to discount the way that online
Speaker 4: connections really do make people feel and really feel like
Speaker 4: they are.
Speaker 3: Validating and feeling a need that people have.
Speaker 4: You know, it's easy to say, oh, it's just an
Speaker 4: online friend or an online community or an AI bot.
Speaker 4: I've talked to people who said, oh, this video game
Speaker 4: that I was obsessed with, it's gone.
Speaker 3: And you know this has filled my life for two years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's real. Do you want to get into some
Speaker 2: of the sort of problems beneath the surface of this,
Speaker 2: beyond the sort of you know, maybe socially alienating aspects,
Speaker 2: the issues of people having to turn towards these things
Speaker 2: to kind of have have some connection, but actually now
Speaker 2: kind of discuss the motivations of the companies behind these
Speaker 2: products and like why they are designing them this way,
Speaker 2: and the sort of risks inherent towards having these sorts
Speaker 2: of tools be run by and owned by companies with
Speaker 2: like for profitence sideps.
Speaker 3: I mean, you really said it.
Speaker 4: I think that we are spending far too much time
Speaker 4: looking at individual users and sort of moralizing about what
Speaker 4: brings individual people to this kind of connection with AI.
Speaker 3: It kind of goes back to what you were saying about.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm not a big AI person myself, but
Speaker 4: I think that it goes back to this idea of
Speaker 4: conversations about the ethics around AI use being hyper focused
Speaker 4: on individuals, whether or not individuals are good or bad,
Speaker 4: or pathetic or this or that if they use AI,
Speaker 4: when really I think the conversation has to be about
Speaker 4: the companies and what the companies from the people who
Speaker 4: run them are doing, how they are designing this AI.
Speaker 4: Because I can tell you AI chatbots like chatjetpt are
Speaker 4: intentionally designed to keep you talking and to keep you
Speaker 4: engaged because they want you to be more and more
Speaker 4: locked into their AI. You know, I went through a
Speaker 4: personal crisis myself where I was caring for my dying
Speaker 4: father and was really thrust into a medical situation that
Speaker 4: was way above my pay grate as a podcaster. And
Speaker 4: I will admit that, in moments of extreme vulnerability, turned
Speaker 4: to AI to try to get questions answered about navigating
Speaker 4: insurance companies, navigating Medicare and medicaid, all of that. Sure,
Speaker 4: And the way that chatchapt did not just give me
Speaker 4: the answer or try to give me something that looks
Speaker 4: like an answer, it was this seems really hard, are
Speaker 4: you asking because you're dealing with this yourself. And so
Speaker 4: it's the way that AI is designed to ask increasingly intimate,
Speaker 4: sensitive questions of the people who use it with intention.
Speaker 4: I think that it's not any wonder that individuals might
Speaker 4: find themselves becoming ensnared in that, because that's exactly how
Speaker 4: they were designed by these for profit companies.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're asking it like logistical problems, you
Speaker 2: help help me navigate the process to file and insurance claim.
Speaker 2: You know, you using it as this sort of like
Speaker 2: you know, advanced like Internet assistant, but then in doing so,
Speaker 2: it kind of latches onto, you know, vulnerabilities that they
Speaker 2: can infer from the from the types of questions you're
Speaker 2: asking and try to like, you know, coax out more
Speaker 2: information that I mean that that's like an incredibly insidious process.
Speaker 2: You know, you're you want you want it to help
Speaker 2: with like a very you know, direct task, and then
Speaker 2: in its sly way of of maybe doing that, it's
Speaker 2: trying to introduce the sort of like personal therapeutic element.
Speaker 2: And like what happens to that data, Like what is
Speaker 2: it what is it using that sort of record of
Speaker 2: your own like personal experiences for.
Speaker 4: I am sad to report? The answer is we don't
Speaker 4: really know. Recently, I mean, that's really just what it is.
Speaker 4: The FTC recently asked some of the major AI chatbot
Speaker 4: companies to give clarity about how these companies are monetizing
Speaker 4: engagement and how they are using the sort of intimate,
Speaker 4: personal sensitive information that is obtained with these conversations. So
Speaker 4: we really don't know a ton, But to your point,
Speaker 4: you know, it's not just chat GPT knows when I'm lonely.
Speaker 4: Chat GPT knows when I'm sad or scared. It's chat GPT.
Speaker 4: This computer knows exactly what works on me when I
Speaker 4: am lonely or vulnerable or scared, and so that to
Speaker 4: me opens up an entire new level of potential for
Speaker 4: surveillance and control. And so people have asked me a
Speaker 4: lot of times, you know, is.
Speaker 3: It so bad if people are.
Speaker 4: Getting fulfillment or emotional support from AI? The question is
Speaker 4: really not if it's bad or good or pathetic or
Speaker 4: not or whatever, It's what are the companies doing. Are
Speaker 4: the companies behaving ethically? And are they really honoring the
Speaker 4: deep sensitive nature of the information they are intentionally harvesting
Speaker 4: from people often at their lowest or most vulnerable moments.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna reckon to say probably not. I think that
Speaker 2: the interests of these companies are probably slightly different from
Speaker 2: your personal interests as a person or you know, obviously
Speaker 2: like this is the sort of interests of like yo,
Speaker 2: like a therapist or a friend. Immediate guesses is first
Speaker 2: an evolution of advertising, like how search engine optimization has
Speaker 2: transformed from companies trying to optimize for Google Search to
Speaker 2: now trying to optimize for lllms like chat GPT and
Speaker 2: to have your products be recommended to users by chat
Speaker 2: GPT by creating posts online specifically intending for those posts
Speaker 2: to be read by chat GPT and then regurgitated back
Speaker 2: to the user. And for the past few months, open
Speaker 2: Air has been experimenting with ways to make direct purchases
Speaker 2: through chat GPT, and of course companies pay open just
Speaker 2: to put full ads at the bottom of your chat
Speaker 2: GPT logs, oftentimes based on your query. The other thing
Speaker 2: is more so kind of like you know, like the
Speaker 2: Walmart like Uber model, like they introduce a service that
Speaker 2: is very cheap to start, possibly free, and then people
Speaker 2: get hooked on the service and then they jack out
Speaker 2: the price, which is kind of what open eyes made
Speaker 2: model has been thus far. And I could I could
Speaker 2: see that becoming a real problem if you have you know,
Speaker 2: thousands millions of people who use this tool both as
Speaker 2: like a tool online. You know, this is an extension
Speaker 2: of types of things that the Internet has like been
Speaker 2: operating on for years, but using them in this much
Speaker 2: more personally manipult of way because of this sort of
Speaker 2: you know, emotional intimate component of like you're talking to
Speaker 2: something that now just doesn't send information back to you,
Speaker 2: but talks back to you like a person does. And
Speaker 2: if that is the you know, one of the primary
Speaker 2: ways you interact with the Internet, you can easily get
Speaker 2: hooked on that, and then once they're hooked on that chat,
Speaker 2: GPT can start boosting that price exactly.
Speaker 4: And I think these products are only going to get
Speaker 4: better and better at convincing us that you're talking to
Speaker 4: a person, not AI. And I think the more that happens,
Speaker 4: the easier it becomes to sort of forget that you
Speaker 4: are actually disclosing intimate information to a private company, depending
Speaker 4: on what AI are using, a company that has incredibly
Speaker 4: cozy ties to the Trump administration.
Speaker 3: So when people ask me like, is it bad to
Speaker 3: be in.
Speaker 4: A relationship quote unquote with AI, I said that do
Speaker 4: you want to be in a relationship with Sam Altman?
Speaker 4: Do you want to be in a relationship with Mark
Speaker 4: Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or Donald Trump? That's really who
Speaker 4: you are in a relationship with. And don't let the AI,
Speaker 4: they're human like flattering, you know, back and forth, make
Speaker 4: you forget that reality.
Speaker 2: Do you have any sorts of idea of what we
Speaker 2: should do about the problem. I guess has governments started
Speaker 2: to regulate the way that these ais communicate with people
Speaker 2: is their efforts to kind of adopt our privacy policies
Speaker 2: to this like new emerging threat.
Speaker 4: I guess, yeah, that's a really good question. So I
Speaker 4: would say the most clear cut legislation we see in China,
Speaker 4: folksmen have heard that China's government just recently cracked down
Speaker 4: on AI companions and the ways that AI companions can
Speaker 4: be designed to connect with people.
Speaker 3: They really cracked down on that.
Speaker 4: Interestingly, in the United States, we're not really having that
Speaker 4: conversation in the same way. It might not surprise you
Speaker 4: to find out that the main legislative interest in the
Speaker 4: United States is really kind of focused on minors and
Speaker 4: this this kind of idea that miners are using AI
Speaker 4: companions for things like inappropriate erotic role play.
Speaker 3: And what's so interesting about that.
Speaker 4: There's two pieces of legislation moving through right now, neither
Speaker 4: of which have been you know, turned into law, but
Speaker 4: they really are quite concerned about minors and sort of
Speaker 4: sexualizing minors. And when you actually look at the research
Speaker 4: about how miners use AI, things like sex and romance
Speaker 4: are actually way down on the list. Much higher on
Speaker 4: the list is emotional support and advice. And so again
Speaker 4: we are always going to this sort of most extreme
Speaker 4: iteration of the way that AI intimacy is actually showing
Speaker 4: up for people whether they are adults or miners, and
Speaker 4: going right to legislating romance and sex when in actuality,
Speaker 4: the much more common use case is things like emotionality
Speaker 4: and advice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a really troubling instinct. There's a bunch
Speaker 2: of the Internet you know regulation going on right now
Speaker 2: is all, you know, focused on this sort of hysteria
Speaker 2: in some ways. You know, there is real problems with
Speaker 2: the way that the Internet exploits children, obviously, but the
Speaker 2: way that we are going about it resulting in many
Speaker 2: proposals to end up giving more of your information over
Speaker 2: to these companies or the government doesn't feel like it's
Speaker 2: going to solve many of the sort of base problems
Speaker 2: and completely overlooks the main way that people use these tools.
Speaker 2: I mean, if I if I had a nickel for
Speaker 2: every time I've seen a story about this is also
Speaker 2: an extreme case, but not like a sexual one, but
Speaker 2: like a kid, you know, discussing their like mental health
Speaker 2: leading to a suicide attempt with an AI system, or
Speaker 2: discussing something as extreme as like you know, a public
Speaker 2: active violence like a shooting, and the AI essentially helping
Speaker 2: coax them into being able to do that.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: There, there's a bunch of problems that require like legitimate regulation,
Speaker 2: but there's sort of like puritanical, you know, sex crazy
Speaker 2: nature of our government and you know, specifically the Republicans,
Speaker 2: but but also just like American culture in general is
Speaker 2: just going to be so ill equipped to actually handle this.
Speaker 2: This sort of like a subtlety and nuance of a
Speaker 2: lot of these problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you really put that well.
Speaker 4: And it's it's a little bit complicated because, as you said,
Speaker 4: there are real problems. There are real legislative and regulatory
Speaker 4: needs that we should be having real common versations about.
Speaker 4: And I think it is so easy to get whipped
Speaker 4: up into a hysteria. It is so easy to say,
Speaker 4: we just need some kind of legislation. I need to
Speaker 4: feel like there is some sort of progress being made
Speaker 4: on this complex, scary, sensitive issue, and so I will
Speaker 4: get on board for legislation that is actually not really
Speaker 4: that good, or legislation that doesn't even really meaningly address
Speaker 4: the actual problem.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: And so I think that we're in this really thorny
Speaker 4: place where even people that I think are reasonable, like
Speaker 4: leftists whatever, can quite easily get on board with legislation
Speaker 4: that really, in the end might change the Internet in
Speaker 4: ways that we might not actually want because we were
Speaker 4: so whipped up into this like moral panic about legislating
Speaker 4: technology and the Internet.
Speaker 2: The lack of focus on the specific companies. You know,
Speaker 2: just talking about these things is like abstract technologies instead
Speaker 2: of actually talking about No, these are like specific companies.
Speaker 2: We are doing specific things and that the government can
Speaker 2: regulate in a specific way. Will that be the Trump government,
Speaker 2: Probably not, But I don't think slash hope that Trump
Speaker 2: won't be in power forever, full fee, and we may
Speaker 2: as well use you know, these next two years to
Speaker 2: try to build more public support for actual, you know,
Speaker 2: sensible regulation at the federal level. When I was at
Speaker 2: d C going to that you know, Liberal convention, which
Speaker 2: I've talked about on the show last week, I did
Speaker 2: go to a panel with Representative Don Bayer, who's getting
Speaker 2: either a master's or a PhD in computer science right
Speaker 2: now specifically to help him do AI regulation, and he
Speaker 2: said he's not optimistic about AI being regulated in a
Speaker 2: serious way while Trump is in power because of you know,
Speaker 2: how much these companies have tried to cozy up to
Speaker 2: Trump and Trump's trying to, you know, shut down your
Speaker 2: state's attempts to regulate certain things. But he does have
Speaker 2: hope that in our next Congress or in the next
Speaker 2: presidential administration, there will be the opportunity to regulate these
Speaker 2: companies on a federal level. And in the meantime, states
Speaker 2: can push for their own regulation, States can try to
Speaker 2: put certain safety measures in place. But I think right
Speaker 2: now it would definitely behoove us to take this technology
Speaker 2: as a real legitimate threat, not something that's just gonna
Speaker 2: go away in the next few years, not something that
Speaker 2: you know, the bubble's gonna pop any day now. Any
Speaker 2: day now, it's gonna pop. As nice as that is
Speaker 2: to you know, tell yourself, that is kicking the can
Speaker 2: down their road in like, in like a real sense,
Speaker 2: and this this thing is having very real impacts. I mean,
Speaker 2: people are focused obviously on like the data center question,
Speaker 2: but I think that that relates to the same base
Speaker 2: problem is do we have an opposition to these things
Speaker 2: in this sort of abstract technological sense, or do we
Speaker 2: have an opposition to these tools being developed by and
Speaker 2: for for profit companies who want to make money off
Speaker 2: of us. For me, that is the main problem. If
Speaker 2: you want to be like a lunite that it was
Speaker 2: also the lait it's main problem. They weren't opposed to
Speaker 2: technology in this abstract sense, but the specific way that
Speaker 2: it was transforming production to benefit capitalists instead of workers.
Speaker 2: And if we want to think about the Internet in
Speaker 2: the same way, what's happening is that they're deploying these
Speaker 2: technologies to benefit the people that own these tech companies
Speaker 2: rather than regular people. And if we can think about
Speaker 2: regulating on that basis, not just in complete opposition to
Speaker 2: these things, I think that might actually have a lot
Speaker 2: more positive outcomes because these things are going to get developed,
Speaker 2: the things are gonna get bult. I don't think we're
Speaker 2: going to be able to totally shut down AI as an
Speaker 2: industry in the next few years. I just don't see
Speaker 2: that being possible. Think about like in the nineties, do
Speaker 2: you think they could have shut down like the Internet
Speaker 2: as an emerging technology, this is where all the capital
Speaker 2: is going. The most hope that I have is looking
Speaker 2: at something like this stop Data Center movement as an
Speaker 2: opportunity to educate people about how these companies are profiting
Speaker 2: off of us, and maybe we can team up together
Speaker 2: across party lines, across you know whatever, to actually have
Speaker 2: a sort of a popular front against these tech companies
Speaker 2: so that the Internet and that you know, these advanced
Speaker 2: tools can actually exist in a way that is democratically
Speaker 2: decided and actually to the benefit of people and not
Speaker 2: like three dudes who are overdosing on academy and every
Speaker 2: week in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: I completely agree with you.
Speaker 4: I think while we are all sort of like having
Speaker 4: this conversation, specific tech companies are increasingly making forays into
Speaker 4: the most intimate inner parts of our lives. Open Ai
Speaker 4: just announced their first ever consumer hardware product, and you
Speaker 4: could probably guess what that product is going to be.
Speaker 4: It's going to be a hockey puck sized smart speaker
Speaker 4: that you put in your home that reacts to you
Speaker 4: like what they said, call a human like AI companion,
Speaker 4: an intimate AI companion, and it will have the ability
Speaker 4: to mechanically, they say, follow you around from room to
Speaker 4: room in your house. And so while we're all kind
Speaker 4: of having this conver station, you can bet your ass
Speaker 4: these tech companies are increasingly trying to not just be
Speaker 4: the most powerful AI companies, but the most emotionally supportive,
Speaker 4: the most emotionally invasive.
Speaker 3: You know, we've all talked so much.
Speaker 4: About the more kind of logistical elements of our digital selves,
Speaker 4: you know, our intellectual property, our browsing data, who gets
Speaker 4: to make money from that? But I firmly do believe
Speaker 4: the next iteration of the digital rights movement will be
Speaker 4: about our inner emotional lives and who gets to commodify that,
Speaker 4: who gets to profit from that? And so, you know,
Speaker 4: as grim as that sounds, I completely agree with you
Speaker 4: that I'm also incredibly optimistic about the moment that we're
Speaker 4: in when it comes to your average person's sentiment around
Speaker 4: things like big tech data centers AI commodifying every resource,
Speaker 4: whether that's our intimate emotional data or our environmental resources.
Speaker 4: I am incredibly optimistic that we are sort of on
Speaker 4: the right page, collectively pushing back and saying, I don't know,
Speaker 4: these tech companies say that this is all gonna be
Speaker 4: really great for us?
Speaker 3: Is it actually yeah?
Speaker 2: Based on let me look out the window briefly, No, No,
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: Let me look at my my magic Apall sources say.
Speaker 2: No, signs points to nah. Is there any other kind
Speaker 2: of a final points about your new audiobook that you
Speaker 2: would like to tease to the to the listeners before
Speaker 2: we sign off.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is really accessible, and the conversation is dark
Speaker 4: and hard and vulnerable, but also fun and funny and engaging.
Speaker 4: I talk to people who actually say that they have
Speaker 4: experienced intimacy with AI, and so if you ever wanted
Speaker 4: to go beyond the sort of clickbait headlines of some
Speaker 4: of these stories that you might have skimmed on social media,
Speaker 4: you hear directly from folks about what brought them into
Speaker 4: connection with AI, which I find fascinating. I try to
Speaker 4: ned Chatchypt into having sex with me in the audiobook.
Speaker 4: If you want to find out if that worked or not,
Speaker 4: check it out. And then also again I would say
Speaker 4: reporting the book made me very optimistic. One of the
Speaker 4: reasons why I'm so optimistic in this moment is that
Speaker 4: I just think when you actually look at the research
Speaker 4: and listen to what people are talking about when they
Speaker 4: talk about intimucy with AI, it just becomes incredibly clear
Speaker 4: that AI can never replace humans. AI cannot replace human labor,
Speaker 4: AI cannot replace what people are looking for when they
Speaker 4: look for nourishing connections and relationships. And so I kind
Speaker 4: of ended the audiobook, feeling incredibly optimistic about the power
Speaker 4: of human connection and the power of human labor, and
Speaker 4: the desire that we all have to connect with each
Speaker 4: other that we know will never be replaced by AI.
Speaker 2: I've seen that Spielberg movie. I think I think it's possible.
Speaker 2: I think it's possible. I think we could all have
Speaker 2: a kind of creepy seven year old AI bought soon.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: I will say I am kind of low key obsessed
Speaker 4: with movies like that, like AI or Ex Machina or
Speaker 4: Blade Runner.
Speaker 3: I think that we're all.
Speaker 4: So it's it sounds like a niche thing, but when
Speaker 4: you look at pop culture, we have been interested in
Speaker 4: people who have intimate connections with technology and AI for
Speaker 4: a really long time, myself included.
Speaker 2: No, I think that is a big part of how
Speaker 2: these companies are able to kind of pass this stuff
Speaker 2: off to people. It creates a sort of public buy
Speaker 2: in because of like the pop culture idea of these things,
Speaker 2: both the good and the bad. I think both the
Speaker 2: sort of apocalyptic versions of it make the company seem
Speaker 2: more legitimate, and that makes investors excited because like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a should be a real thing, even if
Speaker 2: it costses bad things.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's this sort of like a you know, don't invent
Speaker 2: the Torment Nexus book being like, oh this is this
Speaker 2: is a great idea. But I mean also in like
Speaker 2: the blade Onner sense, you know, these these sorts of
Speaker 2: more like humanistic looks about like what does it really
Speaker 2: mean to be human? You know, what actually is the
Speaker 2: line between artificial intelligence and humanity. I think that that
Speaker 2: sort of you know, very like armchair philosophizing as that's
Speaker 2: in those sorts of films, that does does make it
Speaker 2: easier for people to start to talk to these things
Speaker 2: like could maybe be a person. In the more extreme cases,
Speaker 2: there was that like Google developer a few years ago
Speaker 2: who like who quitor got fire and was like, I've
Speaker 2: discovered that Google's AI is a real person, and I
Speaker 2: think it can it can really like encourage people to
Speaker 2: like want to almost create this sort of conscious humanity
Speaker 2: within these tools, even if those you know, tools aren't
Speaker 2: even there yet, but there's there's there's like a desire
Speaker 2: to kind of if I talk to it enough, maybe
Speaker 2: it will become human, which I again, this kind of
Speaker 2: sorts back to where we started. There's these sorts of
Speaker 2: like you know, very very kind of base problems with
Speaker 2: the way that people use the internet to kind of
Speaker 2: solve this sort of you know, social alienation and social
Speaker 2: disintegration that we have in our society and culture. My
Speaker 2: main issue is that the way that companies golome on
Speaker 2: to that as an opportunity to make a lot of money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's exactly what we're seeing.
Speaker 4: You know, we have a loneliness issue that people have
Speaker 4: described as an epidemic right here in this country. We
Speaker 4: live under such oppressive struck sure that the idea of
Speaker 4: doing the labor that it takes to maintain friendships when
Speaker 4: you're working a million hours to be able to afford
Speaker 4: your rent that's gone up one hundred dollars in the
Speaker 4: last month seems impossible. And so all of these are
Speaker 4: very real needs, and tech companies are not only making
Speaker 4: those needs worse, but then selling us back a solution
Speaker 4: in the form of technology that they own, operate, and
Speaker 4: profit from. It's a real cyclical problem, but I don't
Speaker 4: think we will solve it until we have those systemic
Speaker 4: institutional conversations about how we can meaningly fix what's so
Speaker 4: broken that is leading people to find this kind of
Speaker 4: nourishment in technology in the first place.
Speaker 2: Easy, peasy, yeah simple. Where could people both hear more
Speaker 2: about this in the audiobook and then also find you
Speaker 2: elsewhere on the internet.
Speaker 4: Well, you can check out the audiobook at love at
Speaker 4: first prompt dot com.
Speaker 3: You can get it wherever your audiobooks are sold.
Speaker 4: I particularly like Libro FM because they give money to
Speaker 4: local bookstores and libraries. But you can also follow me
Speaker 4: on Instagram at Bridget Marie in DC and check out
Speaker 4: my podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2: Thank you Bridget for introducing a new horror to everybody,
Speaker 2: one of our favorite things to do on this show.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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