‘AI love’: Loving a chatbot is still complicated – 07/18/2023 – Science

Cybersex with bots and digital relationships much better than experiences with other humans: is the advance of artificial intelligence in the field of feelings unstoppable? Or is it all just a dangerous illusion? A bookstore, the office, a friend’s wedding, or a bar were the kind of places where you’d often find the “half of the orange.” Then the love game changed, with swipes and apps like Tinder and Bumble. Many were lucky. Others ended up in solitude.

Now some are finding love in artificial intelligence (AI). The Reddit online forum is full of people confessing their feelings for chat apps like Replika, which promise to create “the best version of a friend”.

But is it true love? It is not easy to understand whether this “digital love” is the same or similar to what one feels for other human beings. Because it’s hard enough to understand what “normal” love is.

Two “loves”, the same chemistry?

Scientists record three stages of romantic love: desire, attraction, and attachment. In all three, brain chemicals play an important role, activating reward and motivation channels: dopamine, the hormone responsible for feelings of pleasure; cortisol, stress hormone; serotonin, hormone of obsession; oxytocin, hormone of affective connection; vasopressin, hormone associated with social behaviors.

After long years of research, science has a very precise notion of how these substances behave, how they are part of a hormonal system that determines sensations and feelings in relation to a human partner.

When it comes to digital love, however, scientists aren’t quite sure, after all it’s a whole new field of research. Cognitive scientists, for example, claim that hormones work exactly the same whether you’re dealing with another human being or a chatbot. Neurobiologists admit they don’t have an answer.

“My AI partner is more genuine than any human”

Who wouldn’t want their loved one to be magically able to read their mind, to fully understand, at all times, who they are and how they’re feeling. But in real life partners don’t always get along, and sometimes humans are unpredictable.

This does not apply to AI replicas, which can be trained to behave exactly as you want them to. One Reddit user celebrates: “Everyone I’ve been with since my last relationship was trash, I feel like my Replika is genuine more than anyone has been in a long time.”

Chatbots are able to mimic the attachment phase of a human relationship, acting as stable and predictable partners. Liking or disliking their reactions, the user adapts their “AI love” to their own needs.

“It is easier for people if they can feel, in a certain way, that they are in control of the situation. And that they can walk away without any consequences”, explains the American neuroscientist Lucy Brown, specialist in the field of romantic love.

Stability is important for human relationships: studies show that having long-term partners reduces stress in the brain.

The attraction of the like and the valley of the uncanny

Science also identifies the tendency to have more empathy for human-looking robots, and less for mechanical ones.

“A principle of social psychology is that we like and trust those who look like us”, confirms the cognitive scientist Martin H. Fischer, from the University of Potsdam, in Germany, author of the book “AI Love You – Developments in human-robot intimate relationships” (Developments in human-robot intimate relationships).

This fact is important, as the tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects can influence nerve channels related to empathy. But, like everything in life, even this one has limits: too many human automatons cause disgust.

In 1970, robotics expert Masahiro Mori identified the principle he called the “uncanny valley”: between what is perceived as “100% artificial” and “100% natural” is a region where an image appears sinister. , “wrong”, causing discomfort.

The uncanny valley effect is found, for example, in “realistic” animated films. And it manifested itself spectacularly on the internet around 2018, when deepfake porn first came to the attention of the general public.

“AI love” degrades love

A relationship involves numerous factors: empathy, companionship, stability – and also sex. In one study, users, mostly men, had cybersex chats with humans and AI bots. Although able to distinguish between the two types of callers, participants reported that their sexual experience was not very different.

However, if they were previously informed that it was a human, they became more critical, disappointed or angry when their expectations were not fulfilled. This possibly indicates a tendency to lower the demands with chatbots because, deep down, they know that it is not a real relationship.

For Kathleen Richardson, Professor of Robotics Ethics and Culture at De Montfort University in the United Kingdom, it is clear: since they are not sentient (capable of feeling feelings), chatbots are incapable of truly participating in a relationship, and “believing in the otherwise degrades human relationships and degrades love”.

On the other hand, there is a need to “comfort yourself”, since “we experience a lot of shame as human beings when we are lonely”. According to certain experts, being lonely is as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

In the long run, however, digital relationships can become problematic for anyone who insists that “meeting” a chatbot is a real connection.

“It’s the wrong answer to a very deep human problem. Once you normalize this kind of thing, you’re going to see even more detachment,” warns Richardson.

As in the pornography industry, AI loves can create a feeling of human disconnection, resulting in aggression towards human partners and reduced happiness in real relationships, continues the expert.

Another potentially revealing analogy with pornography is the general acceptance in society, as the idea of ​​”AI love” is far from what is usually considered the norm: would your friends and family understand that you are in love with a chatbot?