Are flesh and blood relationships becoming obsolete?
AI's march into the most intimate corners of our lives may be unstopable...
AI is beginning to feel like that David Tennent “Doctor Who” set where deadly statues were still only as long as you looked at them. Blink, and they’re suddenly a lot closer.
With AI, it feels like everytime you look at a news feed, it’s gained more ground on us when we weren’t looking, and the 2013 movie “Her” with Joaquin Phoenix as a nerd who falls in love with a chatbot is closer to reality than you know.
This article from “Dazed,” with interactive links, talks about turning famous celebrities and historical figures into AIs you can interact with such as Einstein, Trump, and Obama. (Which makes me wonder just how much longer before Jesus or even God shows up. Islam has a prohibition against portraits of their Prophet, but what about an AI with an arabic voice? Would an AI-Muhammed be acceptable? Would he side with the Sunni or Shia branches of Islam? Given how touchy Muslims are about this, could it actually start flesh and blood violence over it?)
Anyway…
The article also talks about how Caryn Marjorie, a social media influencer on Snapchat, has launched an AI chatbot of herself where you can have “her” as a “virtual girlfriend” for only a dollar a minute.
Lest you think this is just an upgrade to the live sex shows you can get on the Internet, Marjorie explains that she actually worked with psychologists to create programming that would encourage men to discuss their emotional states. Psychologists, lawyers, and priests are protected by law from having to reveal information about their clients; but an AI chatbot has no such protection. Everything you say to it is being recorded. Could the government, which created the “MK-ULTRA” program to identify psychologically vulnerable individuals and reprogram them with malign intent, or a clever hacker gain access to this material? Could hostile foreign governments use this to identify potential “assets” to use?
I’m almost scared to blink anymore…