AI Does Not Stand For ‘Actual Intimacy’The cure for our current ‘epidemic of loneliness and isolation’ lies not in futuristic technology but in ancient wisdom.BY: ROBERT BUSEK
JULY 31, 2023
Over the past several months, Americans have been treated to article after article detailing the benefits and dangers of artificial intelligence. From writing term papers to dispensing legal and medical advice to possibly causing human extinction, AI has the potential to revolutionize how we think and interact with the world around us.
That revolution will not stop with how human beings relate to machines, either. Recently in the New York Post, Ariel Zilber discussed claims made by Mo Gawdat, former head of Google’s semi-secret research and development group X, that a combination of virtual reality and AI-powered robots will initiate a “redesign of love and relationships.” In essence, Gawdat is predicting the rise of the “sexbot,” an artificial sexual partner that will eliminate the “quite messy” issues that plague human interactions.
The sexbot has a long pedigree in science fiction, but Gawdat’s musings go much further than mere sensual satisfaction. In his vision of technological love, “It’s all signals in your brain that you enjoy companionship, and sexuality, and — if you really want to take the magic out of it — it can be simulated.”
AI will apparently transform not just romantic attachment, but platonic friendship as well.
These developments are gaining traction at a time when people feel less connected to those around them than ever before. According to a report from the surgeon general, we are currently suffering through an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” that will have grave consequences for both our own and future generations.
As tech gurus like Gawdat offer us a digital lotus plant to treat our isolation, we must instead look back to more ancient principles if — as St. Augustine puts it in his Confessions — our quest “to love and to be loved” is to bear more than bitter fruit.
‘Old School’ FriendshipAncient thinkers recognized that efforts to secure friendship could have several motivations. One might become friends with another to simply enjoy his company or to pursue common interests. More cynically, one might seek friendship in order to achieve some kind of gain, material or otherwise. According to “Book VIII” of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, these lesser friendships are inherently unstable, for they are founded on the pleasure or benefit sought, and “people do not often consider the same thing to be useful or enjoyable for long.”
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Source:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/31/ai-does-not-stand-for-actual-intimacy/
