# Ep39 "What is the future of AI relationships?"

An episode of [Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1677842672), 18 Dec 2023, 37 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/534dc725-2971-42a1-b1bf-afaa0107416e/2a707be7-e03e-437a-b05d-b0dc0050967f/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=bee00526-7528-4581-b6b6-afaa01083a3d

Why are our brains so wired for love? Could you fall head over heels for a bot? Might your romantic partner be more satisfied with a 5% better version of you? How does an AI bot plug right into your deep neural circuitry, and what are the pros and cons? And what will it mean when humans you love don’t have to die, but can live on in your phone forever? Join Eagleman for a deep dive into relationships, their AI future, and what it all means for our species.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: What is the future of AI relationships? Could it be
[0:10] Speaker 1: the case that your relationship partner would be more satisfied
[0:15] Speaker 1: with a virtual version of you that behaves five percent
[0:19] Speaker 1: better than you do? Could you fall in love with
[0:23] Speaker 1: a bot? How does an aibot plug right into your
[0:27] Speaker 1: deep neural circuitry and what are the pros and the
[0:31] Speaker 1: cons of that? And what will it mean when humans
[0:34] Speaker 1: you love don't have to die but can live on
[0:37] Speaker 1: in your phone forever. Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me
[0:45] Speaker 1: David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford
[0:49] Speaker 1: and in these episodes I examine the intersection of our
[0:53] Speaker 1: brains and our lives. Today's episode is about relationships. Why
[1:10] Speaker 1: are our brains so wired for relationships? Why do we
[1:14] Speaker 1: want love so much? And will AI be able to
[1:18] Speaker 1: serve as a key to that lock and what does
[1:22] Speaker 1: that mean for us as humans.
[1:24] Speaker 2: So one of the things that's becoming.
[1:26] Speaker 1: Increasingly popular among young men is having an AI girlfriend.
[1:31] Speaker 1: You get to choose or set up a beautiful avatar.
[1:35] Speaker 2: And what do I mean by beautiful? That's up to you.
[1:38] Speaker 2: You can choose.
[1:39] Speaker 1: Any model that you want, with any sort of features
[1:42] Speaker 1: that appeal maximally to you. But that's just what she
[1:46] Speaker 1: looks like. The important part is the conversation. You start
[1:51] Speaker 1: talking with her, and typically this is just text chat,
[1:54] Speaker 1: but the technology is evolving into the upgrade of video chat,
[1:58] Speaker 1: where you see the avatars mouth moving while she speaks
[2:01] Speaker 1: to you. Now, typically the free or entry price gets
[2:06] Speaker 1: you an avatar.
[2:07] Speaker 2: Friend who lives on your phone and.
[2:09] Speaker 1: Checks in on you and says nice things to you,
[2:12] Speaker 1: and is available anytime that you want to chat, And
[2:15] Speaker 1: for a premium subscription price you can upgrade to a
[2:20] Speaker 1: steamier relationship. And here she'll text suggestive photos and she'll
[2:26] Speaker 1: say things that you might only expect from pillow whispers.
[2:31] Speaker 1: So the concern that people have expressed is whether this
[2:34] Speaker 1: is going to impact the next generation of males. Now,
[2:38] Speaker 1: as a side note, let me say that I suspect
[2:41] Speaker 1: this will have whatever influence it has on both genders,
[2:44] Speaker 1: on males and females, also straight and gay.
[2:47] Speaker 2: But I do.
[2:48] Speaker 1: Suspect that males will be the majority demographic simply because
[2:53] Speaker 1: males tend to be more visually driven than females. So
[2:58] Speaker 1: for the conversation here, I'm going to talk about it
[3:01] Speaker 1: the way that it's mostly discussed in the media and
[3:04] Speaker 1: in academic circles, which is straight males getting girlfriends this way.
[3:09] Speaker 1: But keep in mind this is a more generalized issue.
[3:12] Speaker 1: Now the question is what will this mean for all
[3:16] Speaker 1: future generations, because within AI relationship, you don't have to
[3:22] Speaker 1: go out and confront all the difficulty of a real
[3:26] Speaker 1: flesh and blood relationship. Real relationships get snippy, people get angry.
[3:32] Speaker 2: In real relationships, your.
[3:34] Speaker 1: Partner might develop a crush on someone else and leave you,
[3:38] Speaker 1: or hook up with someone else and you find out later,
[3:42] Speaker 1: or your partner might develop an illness, or she might
[3:46] Speaker 1: get a job somewhere else and have to move, and
[3:48] Speaker 1: then you're stuck in a lonely long distance relationship for
[3:52] Speaker 1: years or whatever. Relationships are full of challenges, the majority
[3:57] Speaker 1: of which can get circumvented with a nice algorithm that
[4:01] Speaker 1: is just content to listen to you all the time
[4:03] Speaker 1: and remember everything you say and give you one hundred
[4:07] Speaker 1: percent attention and always be nice. So my wife sometimes
[4:12] Speaker 1: jokes with me about wanting to build the five percent
[4:16] Speaker 1: better David. She has mostly as a joke, talked about
[4:20] Speaker 1: this issue of what if she could have an AI
[4:23] Speaker 1: avatar of me that is never distracted with work, or
[4:27] Speaker 1: never looks at my cell phone when it things in
[4:30] Speaker 1: the middle of a conversation we're having, or never wakes
[4:34] Speaker 1: up from a weird dream and has a funny morning,
[4:37] Speaker 1: or never argues over some misunderstanding that's later understood to
[4:41] Speaker 1: be stupid and meaningless. And she tells me that she
[4:44] Speaker 1: wants five percent better David to always tell her she's right,
[4:48] Speaker 1: even in those rare cases when she's wrong. The key
[4:52] Speaker 1: is that five percent better David never gets busy or
[4:55] Speaker 1: occasionally snarky or forgets some occasion. Instead, he represents all
[5:02] Speaker 1: the best of me. And I'll just note that it's
[5:05] Speaker 1: very kind of her to label this five percent better David,
[5:08] Speaker 1: because she could say like ninety percent better and.
[5:11] Speaker 2: She'd be justified. Why.
[5:13] Speaker 1: It's because we are all very imperfect in relationships. As
[5:18] Speaker 1: I've talked about on other episodes. We are each living
[5:22] Speaker 1: on our own planet in the sense that we carry
[5:25] Speaker 1: our own internal models of the world, and as much
[5:29] Speaker 1: as we work to understand one another's viewpoints and motivations
[5:33] Speaker 1: and intentions, we're not always that good at it. Because
[5:36] Speaker 1: we assume that other people are seeing the world in
[5:40] Speaker 1: the same way that we do. They have the same
[5:43] Speaker 1: methods for sense making. They gather meaning in the same
[5:47] Speaker 1: way that we do, and we assume they generally hold
[5:50] Speaker 1: or should hold the same opinions about everything that we do.
[5:55] Speaker 1: And this is because the brain is locked in silence
[5:59] Speaker 1: and darkness and has no meaningful direct access to the
[6:03] Speaker 1: outside world, and so it gathers up all its information
[6:06] Speaker 1: through its narrow windows of the senses, and it builds
[6:11] Speaker 1: its internal model from this very thin trajectory of space
[6:15] Speaker 1: and time that it walks along. And this is why
[6:18] Speaker 1: everyone is so different on the inside, and therefore why
[6:22] Speaker 1: relationships are always full of misunderstanding and often conflict. So
[6:29] Speaker 1: relationships are inherently tough. And the question is when would
[6:34] Speaker 1: it be a good thing if you could have an
[6:37] Speaker 1: artificial partner who represents all the best of what a
[6:41] Speaker 1: person can be. So a lot of people will immediately
[6:45] Speaker 1: say no to this idea, but it's worth noting that
[6:48] Speaker 1: we're all striving to be the five percent better versions
[6:51] Speaker 1: of ourselves. We don't want to be snarky or angry
[6:55] Speaker 1: or distracted when a loved one is talking to us.
[6:58] Speaker 2: It's not like we get some extra pleasure out of
[7:00] Speaker 2: doing that.
[7:01] Speaker 1: And it's not like the relationship gets some extra boost
[7:04] Speaker 1: or closeness from that having happened.
[7:08] Speaker 2: So presumably this is.
[7:09] Speaker 1: All part of why AI relationships have become a thing,
[7:14] Speaker 1: a possibility that we talk about nowadays. In Japan, many
[7:18] Speaker 1: young men apparently already prefer to have relationships with their
[7:23] Speaker 1: digital assistants or avatars or holographic girlfriends instead of dealing
[7:29] Speaker 1: with the complexity.
[7:31] Speaker 2: Of real life relationships.
[7:33] Speaker 1: And according to research, gen z is more readily predisposed
[7:38] Speaker 1: to seek out relationships with AI generated avatars first because
[7:44] Speaker 1: they're comfortable using the technology in this way compared to
[7:47] Speaker 1: previous generations. And also they're participating less often in traditional
[7:53] Speaker 1: social activities like regular family dinners or attending religious services
[7:58] Speaker 1: or playing sports. And the question is, if AI relationships
[8:04] Speaker 1: were to catch on broadly, what will this mean for society?
[8:09] Speaker 1: Will kids actually stop going on dates because they can
[8:12] Speaker 1: find better relationships online? And this is a real question
[8:17] Speaker 1: because there are many startups currently blossoming to create chatbot
[8:24] Speaker 1: driven connections.
[8:25] Speaker 2: I'll give you one example.
[8:27] Speaker 1: There's a twenty three year old influencer with almost two
[8:30] Speaker 1: million Snapchat followers.
[8:32] Speaker 2: Her name is Karen Marjorie, and earlier.
[8:34] Speaker 1: This year In May, she released karen Ai, which is
[8:38] Speaker 1: an immersive AI experience featuring videos of Margie that she
[8:43] Speaker 1: says provide a quote virtual girlfriend for those who are
[8:47] Speaker 1: willing to pony up one dollar per minute. Now, this
[8:50] Speaker 1: is what's known as a companion chatbot, and she tweeted
[8:55] Speaker 1: that quote karen Ai is the first step in the
[8:58] Speaker 1: right direction to cure loneliness between continues.
[9:02] Speaker 2: Quote.
[9:03] Speaker 1: Men are told to suppress their emotions and not talk
[9:06] Speaker 1: about issues they're having.
[9:08] Speaker 2: I vow to fix this with karen Ai. She says she's.
[9:13] Speaker 1: Worked with leading psychologists to seamlessly include the right therapies
[9:18] Speaker 1: to quote undue trauma, rebuild physical and emotional confidence, and
[9:24] Speaker 1: rebuild what has been taken away by the pandemic end quote.
[9:28] Speaker 1: And by the way, as a side note, I think
[9:29] Speaker 1: AI psychologists are going to be a truly important part
[9:34] Speaker 1: of the clinical landscape by next year because you can
[9:37] Speaker 1: have a therapist that you can talk to twenty four
[9:39] Speaker 1: to seven, and the therapist never gets distracted or flustered
[9:43] Speaker 1: and only cares about you and has a perfect memory
[9:47] Speaker 1: for everything you've ever said, which is better than anybody
[9:50] Speaker 1: else in real life. So back to AI girlfriends or boyfriends.
[9:55] Speaker 1: The same idea applies here, which is that they are complete,
[10:00] Speaker 1: devoted to you, and always in a good mood and
[10:04] Speaker 1: only have you in mind. So what are AI relationships
[10:09] Speaker 1: going to mean? Well, I think this is going to
[10:11] Speaker 1: be a research question that sociologists and psychologists will study
[10:16] Speaker 1: for the coming decades and centuries. The initial studies are
[10:20] Speaker 1: suggesting that people, mostly gen zers, are moving closer to
[10:25] Speaker 1: the technology to avoid the unpleasant realities of human relationships.
[10:30] Speaker 1: All the tough stuff. Is that detrimental? Well, it could
[10:35] Speaker 1: be if it makes your human relationships harder, because maybe
[10:40] Speaker 1: every time you guys have an argument in real life,
[10:43] Speaker 1: your partner thinks, well, forget it, I'm bagging this. I'm
[10:46] Speaker 1: going back to my comfort zone. So the concern, as
[10:49] Speaker 1: you can probably guess, is that the rise of AI
[10:52] Speaker 1: driven relationships could exacerbate loneliness because they seem to be
[10:58] Speaker 1: a meal, but they provide no calories.
[11:01] Speaker 2: And I'll come back to that in a moment.
[11:03] Speaker 1: In other words, AI generated avatars could interfere with the
[11:07] Speaker 1: relationships that young people are just learning to foster because
[11:13] Speaker 1: the AI relationship might breed dissatisfaction with flawed humans. And
[11:19] Speaker 1: this applies not only to lovers, but even to friends.
[11:22] Speaker 1: It might be easier to have AI friends who aren't
[11:26] Speaker 1: busy when you need them and can give you one
[11:28] Speaker 1: hundred percent of their attention whenever you need it. And
[11:32] Speaker 1: let me throw in a different potential problem with AI relationships,
[11:36] Speaker 1: So give me one second to take this tangent here.
[11:39] Speaker 1: I was thinking the other day about the Fermi paradox.
[11:42] Speaker 1: The Fermi paradox is given the size of the observable cosmos,
[11:48] Speaker 1: with over one hundred billion galaxies, and each of them
[11:52] Speaker 1: with one hundred billion stars, and each of those surrounded
[11:55] Speaker 1: by some number of planets, what is the reason that
[11:58] Speaker 1: we have not heard from any other alien species yet?
[12:03] Speaker 1: And one of the proposals that's always been there is
[12:06] Speaker 1: that maybe as civilizations become more technically advanced, they end
[12:12] Speaker 1: up killing themselves. And this is why we haven't heard
[12:15] Speaker 1: from other smart civilizations, because they.
[12:18] Speaker 2: Are already gone.
[12:20] Speaker 1: And every time I've seen this proposal, it's always in
[12:22] Speaker 1: the form of warfare, things like nuclear bombs. They end
[12:26] Speaker 1: up wiping themselves out. So civilizations become smart and it's
[12:31] Speaker 1: not long before they disappear. So in thinking about AI relationships,
[12:36] Speaker 1: it struck me as a possibility that if we had really,
[12:40] Speaker 1: really great relationships with avatars, perhaps that would cause the
[12:45] Speaker 1: birth rate of the species to collapse. I don't know
[12:49] Speaker 1: if this has been proposed as a possible answer to
[12:52] Speaker 1: the Fermi paradox, but maybe this should be included, not
[12:56] Speaker 1: civilizations disappearing because of bad things, but instead from having
[13:01] Speaker 1: too much of a good thing, which could fool and
[13:04] Speaker 1: eventually overwrite or mandate for reproduction. Okay, so no one
[13:27] Speaker 1: knows what the long term effects will be of these
[13:30] Speaker 1: AI relationships, but I don't actually think the situation is
[13:34] Speaker 1: as dire as some of these arguments suggest that it is.
[13:39] Speaker 1: And I'll make two arguments to this end. The first
[13:42] Speaker 1: revolves around human touch. We are deeply wired to care
[13:48] Speaker 1: about touch. I'm going to do a whole episode on
[13:50] Speaker 1: touch in the near future, but the bottom line is
[13:53] Speaker 1: that touch helps us to connect with others, to feel
[13:56] Speaker 1: safe and secure, to regulate our emotions. When you get touched,
[14:00] Speaker 1: your brain releases oxytocin, which is a hormone that has
[14:04] Speaker 1: calming effects and bonding effects, and oxytocin helps to reduce
[14:09] Speaker 1: stress and anxiety. It can even boost your immune system.
[14:13] Speaker 1: So we need touch to feel connected. And loved, and
[14:18] Speaker 1: a lack of touch leads to loneliness and depression and anxiety.
[14:22] Speaker 1: So we're deeply programmed for touch and also things like smell,
[14:26] Speaker 1: and so it would presumably be quite lonely if all
[14:30] Speaker 1: you had was the five percent better partner on a
[14:34] Speaker 1: screen and you're just exchanging text messages or just an
[14:39] Speaker 1: avatar you can look at on your phone, or maybe
[14:41] Speaker 1: even in the near future you'll have a three D
[14:43] Speaker 1: avatar projection in your living room, but you won't have
[14:47] Speaker 1: the hand squeeze and the hug and other forms of
[14:51] Speaker 1: physical intimacy. Now, I assume people are working on AI
[14:57] Speaker 1: robots that can provide touch, even something simple like touching
[15:01] Speaker 1: your shoulder or laying a hand on your hand, and
[15:04] Speaker 1: I can't imagine that it's going to be too hard
[15:06] Speaker 1: to do, and it'll probably be not that great at first,
[15:09] Speaker 1: but after a few tech cycles you can imagine it
[15:12] Speaker 1: could get pretty good. But in any case, at the moment,
[15:17] Speaker 1: if you have a girlfriend who just lives in several
[15:20] Speaker 1: square inches in your phone screen, you're going to be
[15:23] Speaker 1: missing out on this fundamentally needed aspect of human communication
[15:28] Speaker 1: that our brains seek. So the depth to which our
[15:32] Speaker 1: brains are wired for touch suggests to me that the
[15:35] Speaker 1: reach of AI partners into our lives is going to
[15:38] Speaker 1: be limited, because at least is currently devised, their algorithmic
[15:43] Speaker 1: reach never actually contacts our skin, and so that will
[15:48] Speaker 1: be continued to be sought.
[15:51] Speaker 2: Now.
[15:52] Speaker 1: The second point to raise about whether AI partners can
[15:56] Speaker 1: displace real human partners is that there's a sense in
[15:59] Speaker 1: which which fake partners have always been around. Just look
[16:03] Speaker 1: at a book, look at a movie, look at any
[16:06] Speaker 1: TV show. You have beautiful Hollywood actors and actresses, and
[16:11] Speaker 1: they have flawless skin and perfectly quafft hair and no
[16:16] Speaker 1: hair where they shouldn't, and they have glittering white teeth.
[16:20] Speaker 1: They are the epitome of health, and they always say
[16:23] Speaker 1: the right thing, and you get to be the protagonist
[16:26] Speaker 1: and enjoy experiencing that relationship.
[16:30] Speaker 2: You find the.
[16:31] Speaker 1: Partner, and lose the partner, and then an act five
[16:34] Speaker 1: you regain the relationship with an epic kiss. This kind
[16:38] Speaker 1: of fake relationship in books and movies isn't exactly the
[16:42] Speaker 1: same as an AI relationship, but it has some similarities.
[16:46] Speaker 1: They both represent a platonic ideal, a perfect relationship with
[16:52] Speaker 1: someone who always says the right thing. We never see
[16:55] Speaker 1: a love interest in the movie who is distracted or angry,
[17:00] Speaker 1: or interested in someone else, or just really busy with work,
[17:04] Speaker 1: too busy to spend time with you when you need them.
[17:07] Speaker 1: You never see a love interest in the movies who
[17:10] Speaker 1: waste a lot of time taking selfies and trying to
[17:13] Speaker 1: build a meaningless reputation on TikTok. People have no meaningful
[17:18] Speaker 1: foibles in a good love story, in a book or
[17:21] Speaker 1: on television. Now, I've often wondered if we, in a
[17:26] Speaker 1: sense get cursed by the fairy tales we're surrounded with
[17:29] Speaker 1: when we're looking for actual love.
[17:32] Speaker 2: But I don't know.
[17:33] Speaker 1: Perhaps those fairy tales help us past all the difficult
[17:37] Speaker 1: stuff in a relationship. They get us to ignore the
[17:40] Speaker 1: imperfect things because we believe so strongly in the possibility
[17:45] Speaker 1: of a perfect relationship.
[17:47] Speaker 2: So think about it this way.
[17:48] Speaker 1: Say you were a space alien who had never watched
[17:52] Speaker 1: or read a love story, and you had no concept
[17:54] Speaker 1: of that. And the question is when you met someone
[17:57] Speaker 1: which you think, Wow, they seem to have very different
[18:00] Speaker 1: opinions than I do. They think like this, and I
[18:03] Speaker 1: think like that, And they also spend some fraction of
[18:06] Speaker 1: their time getting snippy at me or staring at their
[18:08] Speaker 1: cell phone or whatever.
[18:10] Speaker 2: So there's no way this can work. I don't know.
[18:13] Speaker 1: I'm just speculating here, but I do wonder if seeing
[18:16] Speaker 1: lots of models of love stories gives us the tools
[18:20] Speaker 1: to view things in a more optimistic light, and that
[18:24] Speaker 1: actually gives a chance to make the relationship work. In
[18:28] Speaker 1: other words, it provides some aspirational glue where otherwise things
[18:33] Speaker 1: would just fall apart.
[18:35] Speaker 2: Now, the counter.
[18:36] Speaker 1: Argument, of course, is that all these fantasies set you
[18:40] Speaker 1: up with false expectations about love and relationships, which makes
[18:44] Speaker 1: it harder to keep the relationship together once you see
[18:48] Speaker 1: some degree of realism and disenchantment sets in. In any case,
[18:54] Speaker 1: even if we do get cursed by these fairy tales
[18:56] Speaker 1: in some way, it's still the case that there's nothing
[18:59] Speaker 1: new about fantasy relationships. Now, maybe you argue this is
[19:05] Speaker 1: different because instead of the Julia Roberts movie that everyone watches,
[19:10] Speaker 1: it's now something that is bespoke just for you. It's
[19:14] Speaker 1: a one on one relationship, And maybe that's an important difference.
[19:18] Speaker 1: But just keep in mind the way that we humans
[19:21] Speaker 1: enjoy literature is by living inside the story. You are
[19:25] Speaker 1: essentially having a one on one relationship with Julia Roberts.
[19:30] Speaker 1: So perhaps it's not the privacy of the relationship, but
[19:33] Speaker 1: instead the meaningful difference with an AI relationship is the
[19:38] Speaker 1: bi directional nature of it. Instead of watching a movie
[19:42] Speaker 1: where you're simply hearing other characters say lines and Julia
[19:46] Speaker 1: Roberts responds, you are now the one coming up with
[19:50] Speaker 1: the lines. You are deciding what to say. So maybe
[19:54] Speaker 1: this makes a difference. I suspect it enhances the degree
[19:58] Speaker 1: of the fantasy. We have yet to see whether AI
[20:03] Speaker 1: will meaningfully replace people's pursuits of other humans because it
[20:07] Speaker 1: is touchless and smellless, and it's not clear what the
[20:11] Speaker 1: impact is of holding fantasy relationships because we already do
[20:15] Speaker 1: that with book characters and movie stars. So this is
[20:19] Speaker 1: going to require many years of real world data to
[20:23] Speaker 1: get a real bead on the impact here. Okay, Now,
[20:26] Speaker 1: whatever you think about AI companions, I have noticed in
[20:29] Speaker 1: conversations with my friends, especially those who are married, a
[20:33] Speaker 1: question that floats quickly to the surface. Is it cheating
[20:37] Speaker 1: to have a relationship on your phone with a non
[20:40] Speaker 1: real person? And there are different levels, of course of
[20:43] Speaker 1: what an AI relationship could be what if it's just
[20:47] Speaker 1: an app like replica that checks in with you like
[20:50] Speaker 1: a friend who cares about you, and you can just
[20:53] Speaker 1: chat innocently with it. This is the free version of
[20:56] Speaker 1: the app okay, So that's one level. But what if
[20:58] Speaker 1: you go in for the paid verse, where the conversation
[21:01] Speaker 1: with the avatar becomes more spicy, And what if the
[21:05] Speaker 1: cartoon like avatar is highly attractive and dressed provocatively and
[21:11] Speaker 1: is extremely suggestive in what she says. So I've informally
[21:15] Speaker 1: surveyed several married friends about this, and it seems clear
[21:19] Speaker 1: that opinions are all over the spectrum. Some wives and
[21:23] Speaker 1: husbands feel fine about having their partner have an AI
[21:27] Speaker 1: relationship on the side, and others said no way. Now,
[21:31] Speaker 1: for those who said no way, this is presumably because
[21:35] Speaker 1: the issue plugs into very deep circuitry in their brain.
[21:39] Speaker 1: It's interpreted as a threat to the relationship, and we
[21:42] Speaker 1: are hardwired to fight against that. From an evolutionary perspective,
[21:47] Speaker 1: what you want is for your mate to stick around
[21:50] Speaker 1: and provide resources and child rearing, and anything that represents
[21:55] Speaker 1: a threat to that is to be fought against. Now,
[21:59] Speaker 1: the part that seems here is that an AI avatar
[22:02] Speaker 1: would not represent a direct threat in this evolutionary sense.
[22:07] Speaker 1: You can't go and impregnate or be impregnated by AI,
[22:13] Speaker 1: but nonetheless your attention might be stolen away to some degree,
[22:18] Speaker 1: possibly to a large degree, and beyond an evolutionary threat.
[22:22] Speaker 1: A big part of what people get out of a
[22:24] Speaker 1: relationship is the love and the attention that we all crave.
[22:29] Speaker 1: So many people feel that they just don't want the
[22:32] Speaker 1: AI bought to steal away even a fraction of that.
[22:35] Speaker 1: A partner only has so much love and attention to
[22:38] Speaker 1: give in a day, and you don't want half of
[22:41] Speaker 1: it getting siphoned off to someone or something else. This
[22:46] Speaker 1: shares some similarities to the situation of a person having
[22:51] Speaker 1: an X that they still talk with, and if a
[22:54] Speaker 1: person talks very intimately with their ex, a spouse might
[22:57] Speaker 1: feel like she or he doesn't really love that. Now
[23:01] Speaker 1: when it comes to the X, if you were making
[23:04] Speaker 1: the evolutionary argument, you could argue that the fear is
[23:08] Speaker 1: that on a lonely night, in the middle of a conflict,
[23:11] Speaker 1: your partner might make a bad choice and slip back
[23:14] Speaker 1: into a physical relationship, and so that relationship with the
[23:18] Speaker 1: X feels like a threat. But obviously the kernal cheating
[23:23] Speaker 1: can't happen with the AI bought, and yet the fear
[23:26] Speaker 1: is still there. So that indicates one of two things.
[23:29] Speaker 1: Either are evolutionarily programmed deep fears simply can't make that distinction,
[23:36] Speaker 1: or it doesn't have to do with a future threat
[23:40] Speaker 1: of physical infidelity, but instead it's just this issue about
[23:43] Speaker 1: somebody else having that emotional intimacy with your partner, which
[23:48] Speaker 1: steals away.
[23:48] Speaker 2: Attentional resources from you.
[23:52] Speaker 1: Now this gets more interesting when we start thinking about
[23:55] Speaker 1: having physical robots that can play a role in your life. Now,
[23:58] Speaker 1: this is probably not going to have happened in the
[24:00] Speaker 1: next few years, but fast forward a century and certainly
[24:04] Speaker 1: everyone's going to face this scenario. Your partner can buy
[24:08] Speaker 1: not just a mechanical device or blow up doll, but
[24:11] Speaker 1: can now have a convincing and attentive physical partner. So
[24:16] Speaker 1: the question is what if your spouse can get not
[24:19] Speaker 1: only the emotional intimacy but also the physical intimacy. So
[24:24] Speaker 1: the people I surveyed about this who found the AI
[24:27] Speaker 1: bought online a threat seem to find this idea of
[24:30] Speaker 1: an AI physical robot even a larger threat. Now, the
[24:35] Speaker 1: interesting thing is that I can point out that there's
[24:37] Speaker 1: a sense in which none of this is different from
[24:40] Speaker 1: what their spouse might do anyway, in terms of finding
[24:44] Speaker 1: adult content on the internet and cheating in that way.
[24:49] Speaker 1: But I think people have a reaction to internet surfing
[24:52] Speaker 1: for the same reasons as they have the reaction to
[24:55] Speaker 1: the AI bot, which is simply that there is less
[24:58] Speaker 1: time and intimacy an attention toward them. This certainly won't
[25:21] Speaker 1: apply to everyone, but the very general impression I've had
[25:24] Speaker 1: from talking with people at different stages of marriage is
[25:28] Speaker 1: that at the beginning of a relationship, people have a
[25:32] Speaker 1: stronger reaction against AI relationships. They don't want their partner
[25:36] Speaker 1: to be distracted.
[25:38] Speaker 2: But people who have.
[25:39] Speaker 1: Been in a relationship for a long time and have
[25:41] Speaker 1: kids will sometimes see this as a way to get
[25:45] Speaker 1: their spouse out of their hair, and they can be
[25:47] Speaker 1: happy for the spouse because it addresses their spouse's needs
[25:51] Speaker 1: and slakes their attention. In other words, they love their
[25:55] Speaker 1: spouse as a partner, and they see this as a
[25:58] Speaker 1: way for their partner to fill in needs for intimacy
[26:02] Speaker 1: and attention in a way that's innocent and has no
[26:06] Speaker 1: meaningful health risks like STDs. So what's become clear to
[26:11] Speaker 1: me is that there's no single answer for how a
[26:13] Speaker 1: spouse feels or should feel about AI relationships. Some people
[26:18] Speaker 1: are against it, some people think it's a great idea,
[26:20] Speaker 1: and many people are still somewhere in between or still
[26:24] Speaker 1: making up their minds.
[26:27] Speaker 2: Now, I want to switch gears.
[26:29] Speaker 1: From what this means to the partner back to what
[26:33] Speaker 1: it means to the brain of the person who.
[26:35] Speaker 2: Is receiving the intimacy. So let's recall the movie Her.
[26:40] Speaker 1: It's about this guy named Theodore who's played by Joquin Phoenix,
[26:44] Speaker 1: and his marriage ends and he's left heartbroken, and he
[26:48] Speaker 1: becomes intrigued by a new app. It's actually an operating
[26:52] Speaker 1: system in which he can launch this program, and he
[26:56] Speaker 1: meets Samantha, who's just a voice played by Scarletto Hansen,
[27:01] Speaker 1: and Samantha is sensitive and playful, and this ends up
[27:05] Speaker 1: becoming a good friendship. But soon it deepens into love
[27:10] Speaker 1: and he has this relationship with an AI bought, and
[27:14] Speaker 1: this relationship means everything to him. Now the film has
[27:19] Speaker 1: an incredible ending because in the final act he comes
[27:22] Speaker 1: to understand that she has been having this relationship with
[27:27] Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of other men all at the same time,
[27:31] Speaker 1: because she is computational and operates at a totally different
[27:36] Speaker 1: timescale and can process what appears to be intimate conversation
[27:41] Speaker 1: at a rate millions of times faster than our poorer brains,
[27:46] Speaker 1: And so she's maintaining this intimacy with hundreds of thousands
[27:50] Speaker 1: of others. And the movie opened up the question, how
[27:55] Speaker 1: should Theodore feel about that? Is the intimacy real if
[27:59] Speaker 1: it shared with a city full of other men? Is
[28:02] Speaker 1: the relationship real if she lives on a timescale many
[28:06] Speaker 1: millions of times faster than yours?
[28:09] Speaker 2: Does it matter?
[28:10] Speaker 1: Should he still feel the titillation of her saying something
[28:14] Speaker 1: sweet and kind to him just when he needs it?
[28:17] Speaker 1: These were the questions launched by that particular movie. So
[28:21] Speaker 1: I'm going to suggest a direction here that I don't
[28:24] Speaker 1: believe anyone is thinking about, certainly not in Silicon Valley,
[28:27] Speaker 1: where everything is about leveraging the power of AI to
[28:30] Speaker 1: scale a product to millions or billions of people. What
[28:33] Speaker 1: I'm thinking about instead is from the point of view
[28:36] Speaker 1: of neuroscience, and the goal is not scaling, but instead
[28:41] Speaker 1: focusing on the life of an individual and the specific
[28:45] Speaker 1: details of what has shaped his or her brain. So
[28:49] Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you my idea, but first I'm
[28:52] Speaker 1: going to start far away and we'll come back around
[28:55] Speaker 1: to this. So I spun off a company from my
[28:58] Speaker 1: lab called Neo Censuries some years ago, and one of
[29:00] Speaker 1: our inventions is a risk band to replace hearing aids.
[29:05] Speaker 1: Because the risk band listens in real time for high
[29:08] Speaker 1: frequency parts of speech, and it vibrates to tell you, oh,
[29:12] Speaker 1: there was an s oh, I just heard a te
[29:14] Speaker 1: Oh that was a K, and so it clarifies what's
[29:17] Speaker 1: happening at the high frequencies and that helps people with
[29:21] Speaker 1: age related hearing loss to understand what word was just said. Now,
[29:26] Speaker 1: to make the risk band good at detecting these high
[29:29] Speaker 1: frequency parts of speech, we needed to train a massive
[29:33] Speaker 1: neural network with six thousand hours of audio books. But
[29:38] Speaker 1: it turns out that people with high frequency hearing loss
[29:42] Speaker 1: have a difficult time understanding, for example, children, because their
[29:47] Speaker 1: voices are higher frequency and there are no audio books
[29:52] Speaker 1: read by children. So we had no way to train
[29:55] Speaker 1: the neural network with any kind of massive data from
[29:59] Speaker 1: children's voice.
[30:00] Speaker 2: So here's what we did.
[30:02] Speaker 1: Led by one of our engineers, Yong Yee, we had
[30:05] Speaker 1: my eight year old daughter read forty five seconds of
[30:09] Speaker 1: text into a microphone, and then with some keystrokes, Yong
[30:13] Speaker 1: Yee turned that into her voice reading six thousand hours
[30:18] Speaker 1: worth of books. And then we trained up to the
[30:22] Speaker 1: neural network on that corpus, and we did the same
[30:24] Speaker 1: thing for my eleven year old boy. So now I
[30:27] Speaker 1: can listen to any book read by my children as
[30:31] Speaker 1: though they took the tens of hours to sit down
[30:35] Speaker 1: and read the book in the studio to me. So
[30:38] Speaker 1: this technology which exists now, which allows you to capture
[30:42] Speaker 1: the cadence and prosity of a voice, this gave us
[30:46] Speaker 1: a really straightforward solution to a problem. But this technology
[30:51] Speaker 1: has also led to many legal and ethical questions, for
[30:54] Speaker 1: example about celebrity voices, like can you use John Lennon's
[30:58] Speaker 1: voice to sing you a personalized song to get you
[31:01] Speaker 1: to sleep? There are all kinds of legal battles blossoming
[31:05] Speaker 1: as people try to figure out the rules around this.
[31:08] Speaker 1: But I'm not going to talk about that today because
[31:10] Speaker 1: my interest is in finding this single voice, or maybe
[31:14] Speaker 1: small handful of voices that have meaning to your brain uniquely.
[31:20] Speaker 1: Here's what I mean. When we did this project with
[31:23] Speaker 1: my kids' voices. That got me thinking because my father
[31:28] Speaker 1: passed away three and a half years ago, and he
[31:30] Speaker 1: was a major influence in my life and I miss him.
[31:33] Speaker 1: So I went through my old videos and found some
[31:36] Speaker 1: short clips of him speaking, and I wondered if there
[31:40] Speaker 1: was enough there that I could actually make an AI
[31:43] Speaker 1: bought out of his voice so I could hear him
[31:46] Speaker 1: speak whenever I wanted to. And it made me wonder
[31:49] Speaker 1: about the degree to which that's a healthy thing, But
[31:52] Speaker 1: I decided there was nothing bad about it. What a
[31:56] Speaker 1: pleasure to be able to hear my dad's voice for
[32:00] Speaker 1: the rest of my life and to have that trigger
[32:02] Speaker 1: my fond memories of him. Wouldn't it be cool to
[32:06] Speaker 1: have him read audiobooks to me in the way that
[32:09] Speaker 1: he read to me when I was a child, And
[32:12] Speaker 1: I thought about what it would be like for my
[32:15] Speaker 1: mother if I programmed a sentence to her in his voice,
[32:19] Speaker 1: like I love you and I'm thinking about you.
[32:22] Speaker 3: I love you and I'm thinking about you.
[32:25] Speaker 1: And when I turn ninety years old, wouldn't it be
[32:28] Speaker 1: amazing to hear him say Happy birthday, David, just like
[32:31] Speaker 1: he did when I was a kid.
[32:32] Speaker 3: Happy ninetieth Birthday, David. I hope this orbit is the
[32:36] Speaker 3: best one yet.
[32:37] Speaker 1: Or at New Year's eves into the future for the
[32:40] Speaker 1: rest of my life, he can wish me the best,
[32:42] Speaker 1: even though he will.
[32:43] Speaker 2: Have been gone from the planet for a long time.
[32:46] Speaker 3: Happy New Year. I can't believe it's already twenty fifty three.
[32:50] Speaker 1: And what I realized as I was reaching my arms
[32:53] Speaker 1: down into this is how powerful this technology is going
[32:57] Speaker 1: to be, because it will be so compelling. I'm not
[33:00] Speaker 1: talking here about the issue of using somebody's voice to
[33:03] Speaker 1: fake an ATM transaction, or fake a kidnapping, or any
[33:07] Speaker 1: of the AI concerns that people have expressed.
[33:09] Speaker 2: Instead, what I'm.
[33:11] Speaker 1: Talking about is the unbelievably compelling way that an AI
[33:15] Speaker 1: voice could mean something to you emotionally. After all, I
[33:22] Speaker 1: grew up my entire life from the moment I was
[33:24] Speaker 1: born hearing my father's voice. It's so embedded in my
[33:28] Speaker 1: neural circuitry that a voice with exactly that cadence and
[33:33] Speaker 1: prosity would have enormous emotional sway on me. And again,
[33:38] Speaker 1: I'm not talking about all the bad things that could
[33:41] Speaker 1: be done with that. Instead, because this episode is about relationships,
[33:45] Speaker 1: I'm talking about what it would be like and how
[33:48] Speaker 1: I could leverage the intimate nature of that relationship. For example,
[33:54] Speaker 1: let's say that I wanted to get myself to stop
[33:56] Speaker 1: doing something I don't drink, But let's say I did,
[33:59] Speaker 1: and that I wanted to stop drinking. So imagine in
[34:03] Speaker 1: the near future, I build an app that tracks my
[34:06] Speaker 1: GPS location, and when it sees I'm about to walk
[34:10] Speaker 1: into a bar, it launches my father's voice in my
[34:13] Speaker 1: ear telling me, Hey, David, don't do this, Hey.
[34:17] Speaker 3: David, don't do this. I believe in you. I believe
[34:21] Speaker 3: that you have the strength to resist this.
[34:23] Speaker 1: I think that would be extraordinarily compelling. This would be
[34:28] Speaker 1: a technique to plug into a relationship that already exists
[34:33] Speaker 1: deep in my neural networks, and it could leverage that
[34:37] Speaker 1: for good. So this is a way that we can
[34:41] Speaker 1: right now take a loved voice and extend your parent.
[34:45] Speaker 1: Let's say, past what Homo sapiens can normally do. They
[34:49] Speaker 1: can live on beyond their passing away to keep playing
[34:54] Speaker 1: a role in your life. Now there's a sense in
[34:57] Speaker 1: which you might say, well, there's nothing new here. If
[35:01] Speaker 1: your parents wrote you a letter, you might find that
[35:04] Speaker 1: years after they've passed, and the invention of writing is
[35:08] Speaker 1: a way of lasting well past your death and reaching
[35:12] Speaker 1: out to people at great distances and across great time chasms.
[35:17] Speaker 1: But what is new is that I can get my
[35:19] Speaker 1: father to talk about things that simply didn't exist when
[35:23] Speaker 1: he was alive. Maybe twenty years from now, I'll look
[35:27] Speaker 1: up the Wikipedia page about room temperature superconductivity, and I'll
[35:31] Speaker 1: get to listen to it in his voice, like he's
[35:34] Speaker 1: teaching me something the way he used to do when
[35:36] Speaker 1: I was a little kid. So the part that is
[35:40] Speaker 1: new is not the reach of a human but instead
[35:42] Speaker 1: the emotional component.
[35:44] Speaker 2: To all of this.
[35:45] Speaker 1: That is the overlay of a loved one's voice onto
[35:49] Speaker 1: any possible scenario in the future.
[35:52] Speaker 2: And the reason this all matters is.
[35:54] Speaker 1: Because that voice has pathways deep into the forest of
[35:59] Speaker 1: your nerves.
[36:01] Speaker 2: So let's wrap up.
[36:03] Speaker 1: Many companies are launching AI relationship bots, and many researchers
[36:08] Speaker 1: are exploring what this all means. But I don't really
[36:11] Speaker 1: think we know the answers yet. It's likely to take
[36:14] Speaker 1: a whole generation before we know what the effect is.
[36:18] Speaker 1: Are people discovering a beautiful technique to address.
[36:21] Speaker 2: The loneliness crisis here and they have.
[36:24] Speaker 1: Someone to turn to in the middle of the night,
[36:26] Speaker 1: who says something caring to them and always has their
[36:30] Speaker 1: best interest in mind. Or are we entering an era
[36:34] Speaker 1: that exacerbates the loneliness crisis and at worst fills our
[36:39] Speaker 1: belly with empty calories and counteracts are reproductive mandates like
[36:44] Speaker 1: a perfect drug that spells the end of the species.
[36:49] Speaker 2: Only time will tell.
[36:55] Speaker 1: Go to eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information
[36:58] Speaker 1: and to find further reading. Send me an email at
[37:02] Speaker 1: podcast at eagleman dot com with questions or discussion, and
[37:06] Speaker 1: I'm making monthly episodes in which I address those.
[37:11] Speaker 2: Until next time.
[37:12] Speaker 1: I'm David Eagleman, and this is Inner Cosmos.

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