Alone Together

We make our technologies, and they, in turn, shape us.

She was looking for a “no-risk relationship” that would stave off loneliness. A responsive robot, even one just exhibiting scripted behavior, seemed better to her than a demanding boyfriend

What if “relating” to robots makes us feel “good” or “better” simply because we feel more in control?

aliveness seemed to have no intrinsic value. Rather, it is useful only if needed for a specific purpose.

“We shape our buildings and then they shape us

I thought of how Sigmund Freud considered the power of communities both to shape and to subvert us, and a psychoanalytic pun came to mind: “connectivity and its discontents.”

Granting that an AI might develop its own origami of lovemaking positions, I am troubled by the idea of seeking intimacy with a machine that has no feelings, can have no feelings, and is really just a clever collection of “as if ” performances, behaving as if it cared, as if it understood us. Authenticity, for me, follows from the ability to put oneself in the place of another, to relate to the other because of a shared store of human experiences: we are born, have families, and know loss and the reality of death