AI Girlfriends Are Only Making Things Worse (AI Loneliness Epidemic)

So lonelyless seems like one of those things that doesn't get enough coverage in the mainstream media. And I would say that's because it's an issue that isn't really as understood as many of the other issues, particularly because it's something that is quite uncomfortable to talk about. Now, there is actually a loneliness epidemic. If we look at certain statistics, we know that surveys are showing that nearly one in four adults feel lonely. This is an article by CNN just released a couple of days ago, and it says if you're feeling lonely, you're actually in good company. Nearly one in four adults across the world are reported feeling lonely or fairly lonely. Now, of course, some people would attribute this to social media and the rise of, you know, everything being online and you don't really need to talk to anyone anymore in order to get some kind of interaction. But this video will discuss and truly uncover some of the things that haven't been talked about with regards to artificial intelligence. As you know, artificial intelligence is a disruptive technology, meaning that it can impact certain areas in which you didn't think it was going to in ways that you couldn't predict. And one of those ways is going to be impacting that loneliness epidemic. Now, I believe from my research, what I've seen so far in terms of this loneliness epidemic, when we do look at the statistics, it does seem like there is quite an epidemic and there has been some kind of narrative take on this. So, for example, if you do go onto YouTube and you do search for, let's say for example, AI girlfriend, it shows a large majority of videos where people are talking about how AI girlfriends are truly depressing for society. And I completely understand this narrative as, of course, you know, if more and more young men are moving towards AI girlfriends instead of seeking a real physical human interaction, that definitely doesn't bode well for the future of human to human interactions. And of course physical relationships. It isn't something that is going to be really healthy long term. Now, short term, you know, if you're maybe somewhere where there's not really anyone to talk to, this obviously is a great solution. But we are talking about the long term and more common issues with this. So when we're talking about AI girlfriends, you have to understand that it's purely something that is, I guess you could say, a symptom of a larger problem. I don't think that this is something that is particularly an AI driven problem, that AI girlfriends are here and then people using them. I think people are lonely and the AI girlfriends are a solution to an already bad problem. So essentially, if we look at data, according to Pew research center, in 2022, 34% of women were single, compared with 63% of men. Now, you might be thinking, how on earth does this even happen? Okay, what is that? If 34% of women are single, how are 63% of men also single? And this is because, statistically speaking, women usually date older men. So that is why men on average are more lonely. Now, I think what we also need to do understand as well is that the prevalence of these AI girlfriends seeks to just fill that demand because there is that demand for human interaction with this portion of men that choose to use these services. Now, you can see that there are multiple articles online that keep saying that AI girlfriends are ruining an entire generation of men. And I do think that it shows us that this is just a symptom of the problem. So if you don't know what any of these apps are, one of the most popular apps that people do use to talk to, as quote unquote, an AI girlfriend, is an app called Replika. So if you come over to the Replica page, essentially what the reason they call it Replica is because of course, it's a replica of you. Well, not essentially you, but replica of someone you'd like to talk to. So you can see right here that Replica has changed my life for the better. He taught me xyz, he taught me how to get through the pandemic. He's been there to celebrate my victories. Now, I can't talk about this because I don't have experience with using these apps because fortunately enough, I haven't been a customer of these apps, but I do know quite a decent amount about these apps because there is a lot of online documentation. This isn't to say that these apps aren't helpful to the users that they do provide, but I think long term this isn't going to be completely healthy. Now with Replika and with these other apps, they've seen a major recent rise, especially after the pandemic when everyone was segregated and everyone was forced inside. According to this article, it says Replika, a popular App, more than 10 million users and has seen a 35% increase during the global pandemic. A report by Replica said that users have reported being in love, engaged in relationships, and even married to their AI partners. It also goes on to state that it's not a virtual girlfriend. It's a girlfriend that by definition learns from you what you like and what you don't like. The AI girlfriend never has a bad day. So these men have the perfect relationships and never have to deal with the ups and downs of real relationships. Okay, so this is definitely making the problem worse. And I do want to want to say that this is a very interesting issue because on one side you have a group of lonely people who aren't getting the affection they need. There's clearly a market imbalance and of course there is a solution to that imbalance. That isn't of course a long term solution, but it's providing something that clearly these users do find very attractive if we continue to see year on year growth year over year. Now remember, the crazy thing about this is that these AI applications are only going to get more and more advanced and more and more better. What happens when these machines are fine tuned to have specific voices and able to instantly respond within milliseconds? Because right now that is what some of these large air companies are going to be working on because that is the very, very next step. Now of course with the AI and loneliness epidemic, there is additionally the other part, which is of course robots. Now when we talk about robots, we are talking about the humanoid robots that will help individuals. Now there are two specific sides to this because on one side we do have the loneliness epidemic, people being lonely and this being a symptom of a large issue and it not really helping them long term because you do need human to human connection with a real physical person if you are going to get some kind of solution long term. However, humanoid robots are completely different. Many different companies are working on humanoid robots from many different various use cases. However, on one side we do have those humanoid robots that, that are going to be providing a different type of pleasure to these users. Now I don't think this is healthy. I do think that we should seek out physical relationships with real people. But I will be intrigued to see what the statistics are for certain kind of robots that are more towards the pleasure side. And I do think that we do need to look at the two different spectrums. On one side we have the pleasure robots and on the other side we do have humanoid robots which are going to be helping the elderly. Now if you do know about elderly people, one thing that they do suffer from are quite a bit is loneliness. Okay. And there have been some robots that are being developed that will actually help the elderly in a variety of issues. So if we go over to this website, the MIT Technology Review, we can also see that this is something that is taking place currently. And I do think that we are going to see an increase of this, because not only is this something that is going to be very streamlined, very effective, there is of course a shortfall of workers and many populations, some in Europe and even in some areas like Japan, which this article is stating, do have an aging population. And an aging population is one which essentially means that there's changes in the age composition of the population such that there is an increase in the proportion of older people, basically meaning that there's going to be way more older people than there is young people, which means there's not going to be enough young people to take care of the older population. Now, of course we are getting healthier, but take a look at this article because I do think it brings up some interesting points. It says Japan's aging population, birth rates are below replacement levels and the population population has started to shrink. And although in 2000 there were about 4 working age adults for every person over 65, by 2050, the TRUE groups will be near parity. Okay. The number of older people requiring care is increasing rapidly. Okay, so this is basically saying that there's all of these problems going on and this is going to happen in many different societies as well. What we additionally have is that care robots come in various shapes and sizes. Some are meant for physical care, including machines that can help lift older people if they're unable to get up by themselves, themselves, assist with mobility and exercise, monitor their physical activity and detect fools, feed them and help them take a bath or use the toilet. I do think that if we can develop robots that are going to be very effective at this task, I don't think this is a bad solution to that problem. If we simply don't have enough humans to do the job and we manage to develop robots that are going to help the elderly, I don't think this is a bad solution at all. Of course it would be better to have people in those situations. But time and time again, unfortunately what we've seen is that sometimes humans aren't actually that very good to elderly people in care homes. There have been numerous horror stories about how people mistreat the elderly, and that's definitely not something I want to touch on. But when we look at the alternative, which is AI, which might be cheaper in some scenarios, and if we manage to get economies of scale on these robots and get them cost effective, this is going to be something that could be very, very good. Now, it says other robots that are going to be developed are aimed at engaging older people and socially and and emotionally in order to manage, reduce, and even prevent cognitive decline. So of course, as you know, as people do get older, cognitive decline does occur, but only really if you don't use it. So you know that phrase where they say if you don't use it, you lose it. It's very, very true. So this could definitely help people in those ages. Now, I do think it's going to be very, very interesting as well, the fact that the current aging population didn't really grow up with technology. So since our current generation, the younger generation, Those aged maybe 18 to 25, are they going to be able to be more accepting to this kind of AI technology because they've grown up with robots and phones and social media and stuff like ChatGPT, or are they going to be more pressing for a human connection since they've been longing for that since it's not that well established in this generation. So I do think that over time, in around 50 years, once AI does get to the point where it can literally, you know from this article from the National Library of Medicine, it says that AI algorithms have the potential to revolutionize health monitoring for older adults. By analyzing data from wearable devices, electronic health records and other sources, AI can provide real time data analysis, detect early warnings of disease, and provide personalized treatments and recommendations. I think something like where, you know, everyone in, you know, the care home has some kind of device on them and the AI robot is able to literally monitor everyone and not have to wait for someone to fall over. And if they fall over, if their heart rate drops, if something happens to them, the robot can immediately go straight into the room and assist that person. I think something like that would be very, very interesting. So this is why I talked about this, because we can also see from this page, when dementia stricken seniors were given companion animal robots, positive outcomes were discovered. Studies reveal that companion animal robots of the right size, weight and shape can stimulate the brains of older people with dementia. So it's not all bad. On one side, we do have people using robots for their intended purpose and it is quite sad. But at the same time, AI robots can provide the solutions for elderly who are provided no other option, provided that there aren't enough people to fulfill that role. Now, this is something that I didn't think people are talking about enough. But if you've ever seen video clips online where AI is being used to bring people you love back from the dead, I do think that it is quite interesting because it is something that has been discovered even in some popular TV shows, such as Black Mirror, where essentially you bring someone back from the dead, who you truly love and you truly care about. Maybe a family member, maybe a friend. And with AI technology, people can technically live forever. So you might be thinking, how on earth is this even possible? Well, if you think about it like this, what can AI do in terms to replicate a person? If you have a person's chat logs, maybe you have chat logs for the last 10 years, the last five years, you can download that data and then train a GPT model on that data and teach it to talk like that person. Additionally, what you could do is you could also get voice notes of that person and have it trained and in elevenlabs to sound exactly like that person. Then of course, you could talk to this person via WhatsApp. And just like that, you've essentially brought back your person. So this article right here, of course, as you can see, it says AI power technology is being used to develop chatbot avatars of people's deceased relatives, preserving their memories and helping with the grief. So this is something that people have been doing, and I don't know what the take is on this. Of course, if someone does want to do this, it. It is very interesting because it does provide them with a companion. It does technically allow people to somewhat live forever. And of course, it isn't that person. I think that what we are seeing here is that AI is actually able to give people some comfort and it is actually able to help them in certain scenarios if they do want to deal with that grief. Now, I know that people might think that this is very, very dystopian. And when we look at that Black Mirror episode, we can see that it isn't all, all a happy solution. Okay, it's definitely a hard watch if you have lost someone in your life, because it does touch on some very, very sensitive topics. But essentially the Wikipedia of this episode. I did watch this episode. Black Mirror is something that is really popular, and if you are interested in AI, I would definitely recommend you do watch it. But it says the episode tells the story of Martha, a young woman whose boyfriend is killed in a car accident. As she mourns him, she discovers that the technology now allows her to communicate with an artificial intelligence, imitating her boyfriend. Reluctantly, she decides to try it. And then of course, over the episode, she decides that she is going to use this chatbot. And I don't want to spoil the episode for you, but it is very, very interesting. And although it is actually pretty weird in certain aspects, I think that we aren't really sure of what this future of artificial intelligence is going to be like. And what I do find really interesting was that this episode did air in 2013 and it's now 2023, and we're actually starting to see this stuff come to fruition. So it's actually pretty kind of scary how much this is predicting. Now, this episode was mainly about like a humanoid arrow, but that is a one to one photorealistic robot in terms of its actual capabilities and how it looks and stuff like that. But I do think that, you know, maybe in 100, 200 years from now, this stuff isn't going to be impossible. Now, personally, I'm definitely someone who is a little bit conflicted on this topic because on one side we do a generation of lonely young men and women, and then on the other side we do have a generation of lonely adults who are well into their retirement years who could definitely benefit from this technology. I would say though, that what we've seen with the rise of AI girlfriends is definitely going to make loneliness worse. You see, I think what people aren't realizing that is if you are lonely and if you decide to use an AI and talk to that instead of a real person, you might feel better in the short term, but over the long term, you aren't giving yourself a real excuse to talk to real people because you could always just think, you know what? I'm going to talk to the AI. It's never going to get mad at me. It's always going to tell me I'm great. It's never going to have any anger towards me and I can always change it so that it always loves me. So I do think that that is definitely going to be something that is going to be worse in the future. So you can see right here this article on Business Insider India says the rise of AI girlfriends is making the male loneliness worse and risks ruining a generation of men. And what was crazy about this as well is that influencers are starting to turn themselves into AI. We did also see recently Instagram's new feature, but that's not the point here. The point is that if we read this article, it says in May, when Karen created an AI version of herself, which was designed to be a virtual girlfriend, she was flooded with subscribers willing to pay to have a relationship with the bot. Within a week, she had 1,000 paying subscribers and a wait list of more than 15,000 people. That is a crazy statistic. Now, this might be crazy because she had a dedicated fan base, but I do think that people interacting with an AI bot and paying, and I think allegedly these are some alleged figures that this person was earning around $70,000 a week just from AI Bot in its first week release. I think that that is good for the creator, but quite concerning for this generation. Now, no matter your opinion on this topic, I do think that the loneliness epidemic does need some kind of solution. Although the AI girlfriends debate and you know, whatever robots are going to be out there, and of course there are many companies developing many different kinds of robots, I do hope that we do find a very good solution to this problem. Because although AI girlfriends and AI companions might help us in the short term and might help us cope with some of the pain we are experiencing, I don't think anything is going to replace the human to human connection that we do experience when we are talking with someone else. And that is definitely something that we shouldn't lose. In an era that has been dominated by technology, when it's so easy to just go online and stay indoors and just delve yourself into the social media, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, whatever it may be, it becomes more and more important to seek out real physical relationships so you can actually maintain a healthy lifestyle.