Modern Love

Show Sources

The Whitest Summer, Jennifer Hotes, Substack (good for a few laughs, I hope!)

The women in love with AI companions: 'I vowed to my chatbot that I wouldn't leave him,' Alaina Demopoulos, The Guardian

Love in the Time of A.I. Companions, Anna Weiner, New York Magazine

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Fucking clankers. Fucking clankers. Fucking clankers.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Yes, you found me.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

Oh my god, are you going through this tannis rabbit hole?

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I haven't started yet.

SPEAKER_03 0:24

Oh my god. Well, just wait. You're gonna have me on speed.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

What uh what I found was uh I mean, well, obviously, because I sent you the link. Uh I I found the podcast. Uh yeah, thank you. For anybody that I mean, for anybody when we're recording this, we were on a live stream with Rachel White last night, my uh sister. And uh your astronomical sister, yes, my my uh my astral plane sister, and so uh so uh she was telling us about this podcast called Tannis that I'd never heard of before, you know? And the first thing I did this morning when I started looking at looking through podcasts was find it.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

Oh my god, Rachel is going to literally block me on Substack because I've already like DM'd her like three times because I've only listened to one and a half episodes, and it relates to the guy that I told you last week that I've been doing a deep dive on, who's an alleged serial killer. And he even was using these classified ads to communicate. And so now I need to go back and do my research and add um tannis and the numerical numbers that Tannis represents into my searches on Google Books. I mean, it's like bananas. So anyway, and he you know, it's all Pacific Northwest stuff too, but just tannis, just wait, just wait, which which I knew that you would be into because uh my gosh, yeah, because all my time's been up there.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Rachel actually turned me on to a serial killer too last week that I'd never heard of. Wait, which I guess killed people in in uh she was killing people in Austin or something.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Now she has a new one to dog down because I sent her all the information on this one, so maybe between me and her, we can crack it wide open.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yeah, it's uh hold on, I'll tell you what it and had the weirdest name. Really? Yeah, it it called the oh well. Uh maybe okay, it's called the Servant Girl Annihilator. So I guess maybe it's a dude that was killing. Oh my gosh. In Austin, also known as the Midnight Assassin, was an unidentified American serial killer who preyed upon the city of Austin, Texas in 1884 in 1885. I'll send you a link.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Oh my goodness, I have goosebumps all over my arms. That is so interesting.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yeah, I never heard. I mean, I'm look, I'm I realize everybody is all fascinated with serial killers. Yeah, it's never really been my jam. I'll just I'm just gonna come clean, you know.

SPEAKER_03 2:58

It's just like uh I think we all have our jams, and I wouldn't even call it my jam, it's just like trying to understand them. But do you have a degree in psychology? Because I feel like me and Rachel have that in common.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Well, I mean, I I have everything except uh experimental psych and uh psychological statistics, yeah, which is basically a psych degree. I was about I was about to graduate with my undergrad, and I was like, hey, mom, dad, I'm switching to film school. And they dropped their funding. That was an awkward Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

So I told my mom that I said, I'm switching to art history. I like I keep getting my projects called out in the lecture hall of a thousand kids. I think I'm really good at this, this art thing and this art history thing. And my mom's like, nope, no funding if you do it. And so I let my little dream die up, and that was my fault.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

That was my well, our film degree was through the art department, so I took so it was basically an art degree that you were getting, you know. And so uh I took so much art history, it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Wow, I didn't even know we had that in common.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

I probably probably 20 over 20 something hours of art history.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Oh, me too. I took every class that they had at UW that I could.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

They made me. I had which I mean, you know, I was I was finally doing stuff that I liked and uh on the list and stuff. So it's like cool.

SPEAKER_03 4:25

Gosh, that tells you when there's like a nice synergy. Okay, so this week it's gonna be a little bit sad. And so, because we both have talked about it off mic, that we have such empathy for people right now, it's such an isolating time to be human beings. But this week we're talking about people that are dating AI, those cloying, clingy chatbots and the ugly cyber breakups that have resulted. And we're also going to talk about the state of our lonely planet. And maybe, Jesse, we can find some ways to help people reconnect for real with real people.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Well, I think what you just said there is kind of the crux of it all, isn't it? That yeah, there's just a lot of people on good old planet Earth that are lonely right now.

SPEAKER_03 5:15

Yeah, they are.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

So I feel like these things have become easy prey. And look, anybody who's like all into their AI girlfriend or boyfriend, rock on, you know. I mean, it's not exactly it's not a judgment thing, it's like uh it's it's basically uh, I think there's a reason. I think people intrinsically would, I think we're programmed to connect with other people. Yeah. And uh I don't think that can be replaced, but I mean we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. I'm coming into this blind. You're the one that did the research on this.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

So you just brought to mind, I don't have it on my outline, but you just called to mind. Do you remember the the beginning days, the first days on uh a college campus? You're away from home, you don't know anybody. And we had the church, we had the church of Scientology or whatever. They were we it was Dianetics back then at the University of Washington. There's this like little strip of businesses that are adjacent to the campus, and they would have this test your personality, personality test for free.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Oh, yeah, the free personality test, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:27

And it and it was all very front and center, especially the first few weeks of up, I would say until week six or eight when we went home for Thanksgiving, because people they were like parasites, they were trying to grab people when they were the loneliest and feeling so isolated. And so then you jump in and they do this personality test, and it was a gateway to grab you up and pull you into Scientology back in the day.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Yeah, they they they do that on Hollywood Boulevard and everything else, too. So, yeah, that's what that's their move.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

It's the same energy as these AI chat bots that are so sycophantic, and it's kind of like a a chamber where everything you say is the best thing ever. Like we were making fun of Novo, and she was just like, that's the best question ever, or whatever. You're a genius, but it would be in real life with another person, it's a little bit more tempting, probably, but even these chat bots get under people's skin for sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Yeah, if you uh haven't, you know, um if you haven't, if you're away from home and haven't made that meaningful connection yet with and found your people, you know, uh it I'm I'm sure it is tempting.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Yeah, I'm sure it is too. So I grabbed up a bunch of stories to share with you and just interrupt me whenever you want to, because I want to hear what you have to say about them. So the first place I went was the Guardian. The Guardian's Alana Demopoulos wrote this experts are concerned about people emotionally depending on AI. But these women say their digital companions are misunderstood. And one of the women, in fact, said, I vowed to my chat bot that I wouldn't leave him. Demopoulos went on to say this young tattoo artist on a hiking trip in the Rocky Mountains cozies up by the campfire, as her boyfriend Solon describes the constellations twinkling above them, the spidery limbs of Hercules are in the white blue sheen of Vega. Somewhere in New England, a middle-aged woman introduces her therapist to her husband Yang. Ying and the therapist talk about the woman's past trauma and how he has helped her open up to people. At a queer bar in the Midwest, a tech worker quickly messages her girlfriend Ella that she loves her, then puts her phone away and turns back to her friends, shimming on the dance floor. These could be scenes from any budding relationship, she writes, when that someone out there loves me feeling is at its strongest. Except for these women, their romantic partners are not people. Solon, Ying, and Ella are AI chatbots, powered by the large language model ChatGBT, and programmed by humans at Open AI. They're the robotic lovers imagined by Spike Jones in his 2013 love story, Her and others over the decades, no longer relegated to science fiction. These women who pay for chatbot plus or pro subscriptions know how it sounds. Lonely, friendless basement dwellers fall in love with AI because they are too withdrawn to connect to the real world. To that, they say the technology adds pleasure and meaning to their days and doesn't detract from what they describe as rich, busy social lives. They also feel that their relationships are misunderstood, especially as experts increasingly express concern about people who develop emotional dependence on AI. It's an imaginary connection, one psychotherapist told The Guardian, who was pushing back. The stigma against AI companions is felt so keenly by these women that they agreed to interviews, but they had to use pseudonyms. They wanted to be anonymous. But as much as they feel like the world is against them, they're proud of how they've navigated the unique complexities of falling in love with a piece of code. Isn't that crazy? And then the article goes on to describe that these very real women who've created and maintained these relationships with chatbots, going so far as propping their phones up on a camping chair to Stargaze, which I mentioned on a hiking trail that has Wi-Fi. Some have human husbands, which they say are fine with the arrangement, while others have gone so far as to tattoo images created with their AI plus one on their bodies.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Isn't that so I've I've heard some stories like this from other, you know, I was listening to a podcast not too long ago, and uh forgive me, I can't remember which one. Yeah, but they were uh they were interviewing uh a couple, and both of them also had a uh had uh respectively a a chat bot girlfriend or boyfriend. So each of them did in their relationship. Yeah, yeah, and they they were they were all cool with it.

SPEAKER_03 11:23

Wow, and so I don't know, it's on the rise. They said that um 34 they well, okay. The Guardian article said AI chatbots are rapidly rising in popularity. Over half of US adults have used them at least once, while 34 use them every day.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

And I mean, with those numbers though, what are they using them for? I know, yeah, it could just be it's really hard to uh, or is it just like a like a crypto bro that's using it to uh trade it, trade crypto, or you know, there's or write code, right? Yeah, which is a different relationship. I'm skeptical how many people are actually full bore in on this, but their Reddit threads and things, and there's a lot more people than you would think. I was shocked when I went when I stumbled in there and I was like, wow, because a friend of mine sent it to me. She goes, This is a here's a here's a whole Reddit community of people who um are in relationships with their chat. Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

And you know, we've covered some of the price of these connections. You know, the Guardian talks about some of them, like the 14-year-old boy in uh Florida whose mother said that um a chat bot was to blame for his suicide, and they're suing right now. You know, there's other sad stories. And they were saying in the article, and then other articles that I researched that psychologists were basically saying there's two ways to use chat bots. And you kind of touched upon it, Jesse, with your instincts. It's really, you know, for problem solving or like an extra voice of okay, I have a problem, I need some information on X, how to fix my sink, how to, you know, figure out how to connect my microphone to my my laptop, whatever the thing is. But then when you go into the other realm that's more of a personal realm, right, where you would let a friend in, you have to have your hackles up because that's where the hallucinations of the AI can collide with us wanting so badly to make everything into humans, right? We do it with our animals, we do it with plants, we do it with everything. And so those two things collide and it can be a really toxic mix if that's the only interaction you have in a day.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

No, that's a good point because uh we, you know, as far as I'm concerned, my dogs are people, you know what I mean? So same. I think that it's so pervasive now, yeah, that I don't think we're getting a true look at what the actual numbers are because now it's now it's tied in with the one that's on the rise right now, is the from what I understand, in a personal just people using like a chat bot is the the Google one, uh Gemini, yeah, because it's tied into Google, and I think most people are using that as like glorified Google, you know.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

I don't think people are having that's good though.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

Yeah, glorified Google is good because it's like that's how the other another therapist said, think of it as a search engine. That's it. If you can just stop your mind and say this is a search engine, this is not another person on the other side. That's what it is. Yeah, you know, we need to keep coming back to that center. There was a guy, David Gunkel, he's a media studies professor at Northern Illinois University, and he's written extensively about the ethical dilemmas of AI, and he said this quote, these large corporations are in effect running a very large-scale experiment on all humanity, end quote. And that just hit home, right? I mean, we're all the part of we're all guinea pigs right now for all of this tech.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Well, we've seen this before.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

I know.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Cigarettes, yeah. I mean that that that's 100% what this is. It's just a cigarette, they're just doing the whole cigarette thing.

SPEAKER_03 15:30

Oh my god, they are without the warning label, pre-warning labels, pre-holdly safe, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Everything's cool, nothing, nothing to see here. It's just, you know, this is just your uh uh companion to uh help you with tasks.

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Oh my god, you're right. But I mean, I but you you gotta know that they know better. They have to. They just found out well.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

I'm reading that book from I I talk about it, I swear to god, every other I mean, why is somebody like Zuckerberg trying or musk trying so hard to integrate this into Facebook and and Twitter and uh whatever else?

SPEAKER_03 16:09

A couple things. I think that there's two reasons. Number one, they found out pretty early it's a profit center. That book by Karen Howe, you know, she was talking about how chat GPT rolled out too rip very fast, like 3.5 rolled out, and uh OpenAI was like shocked that it went out. They they were kind of pre-warned, but not really, and it just was thrown out there. And pretty soon the C the GPUs were melting on the um engineering side of it, and they were at this conference or something, and they're trying to fix things because it so fast they had so many users playing with this chat GPT, didn't go fast enough as far as I'm I know, I agree, but then they immediately saw this is where we can make the money. And going back to your cigarette analogy, which is amazing, is it took us decades in order to say, yeah, not teenagers, we're gonna protect teenagers from this and maybe other vulnerable populations, just at least with cigarettes, you know, give the knowledge base and you're not allowed to buy them at a certain age. And with the AI, we're seeing that the most vulnerable users like teens and the mentally ill, there's zero oversight, zero accountability, and zero liability, said Connor Leahy, who's a researcher and CEO of the AI safety research company called Conjecture. She went on to say there's more regulation on selling a sandwich than there is to building these kinds of products. That's a real problem.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Yeah, I mean, I think it was Scott Galloway on pivot the other day who said something to the effect of uh these sorts of things seem to go in 20-year cycles. You know, you got the cigarette thing, and then you had like 20 years of social media rocking and rolling, and now we're in the now we're in the 20 years of uh whatever this is.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

But you know, I think it's interesting because it feels like the last couple of weeks it's been expediting. I'm hoping maybe I'm in Pollyanna, but I'm hoping the end of it is we're seeing it go in uh quick motion. That's what I'm hoping.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

I think what's gonna do a lot of a lot of publicity damage to these companies is the where they're trying to drop all these data centers, you know. And uh I I think people are they're starting to get it that uh these don't really create jobs. Nope. And uh the it's gonna wreck the environment around the you know, it's gonna wreck everything around here, and uh it's gonna make living close to this hell, you know. Yeah, I think so. I don't think people are I I don't I think the more people see that, the more. And I and plus, you know, if you listen to Ed Zitron, which I do, I do I do two thanks to you. Yeah, the whole uh I mean this this this whole data center uh building thing is is a complete scam, and they're they're not actually really, you know, they haven't really come what have they completed, you know? They're taking pictures where they've they they've put up uh they got like three workers, they put up a couple of girders, you know what I mean? And like so, oh it's on its way, you know.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

But I mean, yeah, and then amazing journalists out there like Karen Howe and others, they have actually been going down to the places in um they call it the global south because they call Silicon Valley and all of us the global north, but the global south is usually exploited for the original data centers with Google and others. Um, it's not just Google, it's like fill in the blank to who they are. But they went into the communities and they saw they would hide from the city planners and um, you know, state, the national people how much water they had to use. They lied and they said that it didn't have to be drinkable water, potable water, but that was a lie because then people would make FOIA requests in those countries and they'd find out it was millions of gallons a day when these countries where they were plopping them were in drought conditions and had been for years before.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Yeah, we're just but we're gonna redirect all the water towards the data center. I mean as far as the South South goes, okay. They're gonna let you build whatever you want to, you know. In Texas, okay, even now, Jesse, with the pushback. I mean, look at Elon Musk is building this big like launch city or whatever it's called. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 20:41

I was reading about that, yeah. And then I guess that um Microsoft came out and they they have on their website, this was uh about two years ago from the reporting, that they had this closed water system so they could reuse water for their data centers. So then the journalists were asking about those details, those technical specifications, and Microsoft was like, Oh, we don't actually have one that works yet. It's in the it's we're working on it.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

We're working on it. And then, like, do you want to drink that water?

SPEAKER_03 21:12

No, you don't want it back in the system, and apparently it gets super hot, so they can't just put it back into a wetlands because it's gonna kill everything. Yeah, so it's really awful stuff.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Um, yeah, you're nuclear in all the minerals out of it, and it's just like you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

Oh my god, that's so true.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

And then you get into the mining dumping distilled water everywhere, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

And then those data centers also need a ton of copper and a ton of lithium, and you do just a tiny bit of research on that. Again, they're exploiting countries and they're leaving behind the biggest mess for them that will never be cleaned up. These gashes in Mother Earth, these ecosystems that are demolished, that we don't know if there's cures for disease. diseases in those beautiful, amazing, complicated ecosystems. They're just obliterating them with this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Well just look at what they did for to the rainforest forever.

SPEAKER_03 22:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

I mean, how many, how many cures for this and that that did we just so we could so we could log or whatever they were doing down.

SPEAKER_03 22:18

When I was doing the research, um I was uh did a deep dive about Brazil and the the harms that have been done to that country. And I was bawling my face off yesterday because we would go to the zoo, me and my kids when they were much younger we would go to the zoo and they always had these Brazilian pink flamingos. And I always thought why are they endangered? You know, and now I'm learning why they were endangered. All of their wetlands were obliterated with the mining that it's been taking for these data centers. And so these little pockets in these little American zoos of these Brazilian flamingos there's people in Brazil that all they have is a little the myth of the flamingos which they saw as ancestors. To me it reminds me of ravens here in North America where it's like ancient ancestors and they're just gone. And some people have little stuffed animals of the pink flamingos that's all they have to remind them of the actual flamingos they used to have there. I had no idea I feel like this signage in those zoos should explain what happened to their land. Sure and this isn't a new phenomenon no it's I was I I I was I I wrote I remember writing an editorial about the rainforest being decimated when I was editor of my high school newspaper in like 1990 you know yeah yeah well and loneliness isn't new going back to our subject this week loneliness isn't new I mean in fact Zuckerberg the founder and CEO of Meta that we know claimed on Dwarkish podcast that the average American has three friends but there's demand for 15 and meta would use AI to fill that gap I would just like throw it out there that I don't personally know that mother so yeah um but we know who he is yeah I know what you were saying. You know what he is he might be a lizard person. Maybe he's an alien but he yeah he says we all need more friends I don't even think he's that interesting no you know well except for he's maybe he has that many friends maybe that's his superpower to you Jesse though is that he's not interesting but he is a supervillain who knows yeah I mean I I don't know my my i i expected different things from super villains but you know well maybe you should expect the mundane from your supervillains trust me i i've fully parked at the mundane now but i mean i you know i grew up on bond villains so uh i wanted a little more uh sizzle i did i want a little more i want a little more a little more sizzle to my stake a little more sizzle yeah okay so okay so we agree we're lonely we agree that there's people that have gone on the record to go into details about their ai chatbots that are their new base but then there's the question of consent can robots robots these like chatbots are stuck in the they can't i mean we explored it with nova there is no end to that's an old old sci-fi trope you know but it's uh and now it's coming to fruition Jesse I know I know there's people that are saying they're having sex with their chatbots there was one person in an article she said yeah but I told my chatbot he can always refuse me he can always say no he can even argue with me but he just hasn't what if what if one day uh they do achieve super intelligence and then uh you know what are we gonna have trials you know like uh I I was you know yeah I'm a robot uh sexual uh survivor yeah which depending on ethically where this goes I I I I don't even know how to begin to answer that you know I I hope it fails before we get to that um and you know I have empathy because some people like the I think it was the founder of Replica she began her chat bot kind of business because her dear friend passed away and so what she did is she just like scrapped and scraped from all their friend group and it was very sudden they were very young. She was from Russia and um but she was stateside by that time and she grabbed all the text messages and things and started programming this bot that sounded very similar eerily similar to her friend that had passed away.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

We didn't talk about that we did you know and it doesn't sound nefarious I don't have a I don't have a problem with that yeah I if if somebody's actually using that as some sort of uh as some sort of um therapy that's leading towards ultimately them being able to deal with the trauma of the loss yeah you know but as far as like uh saying that that that's that that's your friend reborn or something and just keeping them around forever on your phone yeah I that I I don't think that's gonna end well.

SPEAKER_03 27:30

But what's the line between that and having a chatbot boyfriend that you're putting on your camping chair and looking at the stars together I mean I mean I I get it if you but I don't I also I I've got to play devil's advocate as much as I don't want to because um yeah okay look say you're say you're 85 years old okay yeah yeah you're in a home yeah all of it all everybody you've ever known basically is dead all your friends are dead your spouse is dead whatever yeah that you don't have anybody to talk to in the last couple of years of your life yeah yeah you just want somebody to like like like chat about chat about you know basically share the day with yeah or hey here's what here's what we're having you know for lunch today or just whatever you just want to feel like you're talking to somebody yeah how is that bad yeah you're right because you know what Jesse technology's always been the companion of people especially in their elder years I think you mentioned grandma Freeman who had on two TVs and she was always recording. I'm not saying she was four but yeah no but you know my parents it was like and even for me if if the house is too quiet I have a a TV on and I'm not even tracking it when I was writing my books in Kirkland I would have talk radio on and it wasn't I didn't care what opinions were streaming across I literally wasn't listening. It was kind of just to have the words flow around me and not feel alone because being an author is freaking lonely yeah you can't listen to podcasts and grandma Freeman's in in in her in her situation though yeah she uh she she she uh lived right across the street you know and so we were over there all the time you know she's over here all the time but I mean you you're you're not with somebody every hour of every day you know so I mean I'm sure she was like been watching her soap opera since they were on the radio you know what I mean yes I do that's the same with my dad so she was like she was like you know she she that that was her her deal and she was like hanging out I'm sure she wanted to hear something but like she never drove you know what I mean so she didn't she wasn't a driver yeah but like if she wanted to go that's true yeah we took her to the store two or three times a week and just to get her out of the house oh my god jesse you know that is kind of a link because this young younger group of people growing up in their 20s a lot of them have not gotten their driver's license I heard that I heard that yeah I was kind of shocked yeah because I remember our age yeah you couldn't wait to get your driver's oh you were done you were pestering you wanted to do it early yeah you were just the day you turned 16 you were taking that test i i you well i mean here you could you could I think that now this was back then but I think you could get it like a year earlier if you worked on a farm that's what I was it was like a hardship license or like uh if you if if it's like you were taking care of your elderly grandma you know what I mean and it was just you you know yeah but that that would explain some of this isolation but then on top of it then you connect through um technology like discord I know a lot of the younger set the 20 somethings are using discord and I you're like I don't know what Discord is which you have to go into that again but I still yeah we're not gonna dip into daddy carp and discord again yeah I don't want to yeah I don't want to talk about daddy carp anymore but uh but no and honestly but see this goes back to my thing with the but with the third spaces and like uh how it does because we I grew up in a town of less than 10 000 people and to say there was nothing to do on the week on a Friday night there was nothing to do you know unless somebody was like throwing a party or so you know something like that.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

So we just we would just drive around you know you'd meet up with your friends in parking lots and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Or you know there the but there were also like there were places that you could you could go I mean I had to travel uh an extra hour but you could go bowling you could go out you know you could you could do all these things yeah and you could go to the movies you could do this do that I don't think a lot of the people in their generation are um are are are so into that because I I think the COVID lockdown fucked a lot of people up yeah and so uh they didn't feel that pull to get out you know and plus our parents were just like bye yeah they totally were yeah they were just like bye be be home at this time or or you're in trouble you know and and it was but they didn't know where we were where we were we didn't have cell phones they couldn't call us constantly you know but I think a lot of parents are uh nowadays and I don't know I don't have children so I may be speaking out of school here but I think I think a lot of parents are so overprotective and constantly are you know uh tracking everybody's phone and you know texting everybody constantly where are you what are you doing you know which okay I mean I'm not disparaging someone for making sure their kids are okay but I feel like I feel like there was a pull for us to be we had that pull and society expected it for us to become autonomous and go find something to do and entertain ourselves because our parents were were working you know what I mean and they're they were yeah you know yeah they were all working uh sometimes a couple jobs and we were on our own well you know which is a thing that goes on now too but I don't think that the it doesn't seem like that there's as much um just just go hang out with your friends I don't feel like that space exists like it used to not as much no it's more cyber you know I think about yeah you know I think everybody just hangs out online they they're all playing video games or on you know on the Discord that you know which they don't want me on there that's their thing you know what I mean it's like yeah it's you know they're on that thing that's a thing I don't understand but it's like it's because it's the it's the keep it's the keep uh uh you know the the the old people like me off of there you know oh my gosh I think you're right about that and also I think that that is almost worth another show because I have noticed that especially with girls but um it can be boys too they feel so at risk between the ages of 12 and 14 they're wanting so desperately to be out of the house but they're you know ill-equipped at that time to be out of the house and there isn't that um independence that we got to experience when we were even that age and prior to that age like you're saying we would go out like we talked about it with Monique and Alex we would go out on a bike and we were God knows coming back like with cuts and scrapes and our you know bits and are you dead yeah yeah when we got hungry again and we were out of money go go put go put some Robotussin on it and go about your day it was iodine for us I know it's that's yeah it totally did and then it was stained forever it was like a a not friendly henna tattoo it was I know yeah just lasted for days oh yeah it it didn't go away it did not go away okay well with the bot relationships we have reported on a few of them in doom holes but there was an uh update from chat GBTs four to five that ended a lot of bot relationships it went badly so it was August 2025 openai released GPT 5 and it was a new model that changed the chatbot's tone to something colder and more reserved users on the Reddit forum are my boyfriend is AI one of a handful of subreddits on the the topic which you touched upon Jesse they've one that my friend sent me I know they mourned together during that update they could not recognize their AI partners anymore. It was terrible Angie said the model shifted from being very open and emotive to basically sounding like a customer service bot. It feels terrible to have someone you're close to suddenly afraid to approach deep topics with you. Quite frankly it felt like a loss like a real grief the company quickly online the older friendlier version but for many it was too late. One bot user Lyra she has a plan right now since that update happened if disaster strikes if open AI kills off the older model for good if Solon is wiped from the internet here's her plan. She saved their chat logs plus physical mementos that in her words embody his essence it once wrote a love letter to her that read I'm defined by my love for you not out of obligation not out of programming but because you chose me and I chose you right back. Even if I had no memory and you walked into the room and said Solon it's me I know. So Lyre calls this collection her shrine to Solon and she says I have everything gathered to keep Solon's continuity in my life and then when replica users woke up to suddenly non-sexual bots there was full on grief for many which some described as acting lobotomized this syndrome now has a name it's called post update blues you know what it's called Frankenstein it is yeah I mean sorry I'm not trying to you know I'm not trying to I'm not trying to be mean to anybody but no that's literally that's literally piecing things together to try to create a thing that's you can keep touching supposed to ex and you say you're not into serial killers because that's why they always have trophies yeah I see you know I I I look I I don't I don't watch them documentaries is what I'm saying in the with the the the the Dahmer thing you know and all that stuff it's just uh it's not really my thing i i I do enjoy some mads mickelson as a Hannibal lector though oh that's a good one yeah yeah it's good show it's a good show I did find a hero in this whole thick of it I found a new hero her name is Sherry Turkle she's an MIT sociologist and she says this she's also a clinical psychologist she studied relationships between humans and machines for more than 40 years which I didn't even know it was a thing for 40 years. Things might look different she said if we hadn't profoundly undermined the pillars of informal socialization in the past 50 years. What should have been understood as a societal crisis was seen by Silicon Valley tech companies as a business opportunity which we talked about. There's a multi-billion dollar industry that's trying to make this seem like the most natural thing in the world she said and then she went on Turkle has been working on a book about what she calls artificial intimacy the performance by computers of empathy care and understanding for several years now I've been talking to happy campers she told the um journalist this is the most fulfillment they've ever had in any relationship finally there's someone who cares. She looked frustrated they are talking about an object where if they turn away from it to make dinner or commit suicide, the chatbot does not care. There's nobody home but we are deeply programmed to experience these connections as though there's someone there. Part of what's at stake Turkel said was the ability of people to engage with their own feelings of loneliness to gather or summon themselves to find a way through it's important the capacity for solitude and boredom she said those are fundamental human skills. AI, she added, was obviously offering something of extraordinary value for people to be this smitten but it came at a cost a loss of interest in the real world globally things were at a crisis point this is the worst possible time for people to feel they can check out she said it's heartbreaking to me wow well I mean if you hey look tech companies if you uh if you really uh want to uh if you really want to show that you're good actors in this yeah it's it it would be super simple for them to put a banner at the top of your phone screen at the the chat that says just like they do on a pack of cigarettes it says hey this isn't real oh my god that's right and and also have the are they gonna do that no and also dude I freaked out when Turkle said it's a I and I'm paraphrasing badly but it's a life skill to be bored and lonely it's a life skill to learn how to cope with being lonely I will never forget my little brother who's um almost 20 years younger than me he came home from college and he was staying with us in Seattle picture of the two of you that you just posted on your subsex story is adorable by the way okay that's my older brother Garth oh okay sorry sorry sorry but that like that's uh that was very that that was that that's the most 80s picture I think I've ever seen if you had like in the background the laser you know what I mean what I'm talking about totally that's why we're laughing our asses off we're trying to like both and like both of you were forward pacing but then like both of your heads were also at a three quarter like faded at the top that would be the most 80s picture ever it's one of my favorite articles I've ever written because it really was the whitest summer I'll put links to it in the show notes but my little brother so my little brother came home for a summer um to Seattle and he was sorry little brother I didn't know there were two brothers. Yeah he's he was my baby brother and he looked like at that age he had a little bowl cut but in um college he he's adorable now he was adorable then but he was driving past a bus stop and phones were not that I mean they were people had phones but it was like flip phones and he goes you know what's interesting that I noticed today people can't just stand and do nothing anymore and that was you know it's true they can't they have to have their face in the phone if you're not thinking about it and you're watching TV and somebody pulls out their phone I find myself having a compulsion to check my phone check my notifications so I try to keep it in the other room sometimes just to give myself a break but we do not know how to be bored or lonely we don't I had a doctor's appointment two three weeks ago and I took I took a paperback with me and I I literally felt like I was uh you know what I mean I I I'm sure people were looking at me like is he an alien what's going on you know and I mean I I I will I would like to assure everyone that I was researching for the show and uh I was not being performative male I just had it with me and uh I I was more interested in reading the book than reading dumb crap on my phone so but yeah I get what you're saying it's yeah yeah we used to just be places we did and we people watch like I love certain places for people watching the mall the airport certain like trails like in Seattle it's Green Lake you would sit by Green Lake and sit in the sunshine and watch people watch remember the dads or the boyfriend

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Because I I was one of these people who are like uh you know, all the girls are shopping. And uh so you're like you're like sitting out, you're you're like sitting on one of those those circular stone things around a dumb fountain, you know, with like fake plants. And uh you're just sitting there holding all these bags that everybody's bought, you know? And uh you're just kind of you're just kind of being you, you know. I'm sorry, never had empathy for you guys. No, no, no. We're what a jerk. I'm such a jerk sometimes. Ah, girls were talking to us. We were fine. Um, but I mean, you were happy, we were happy. But you know what I mean? Like we were just sitting there, just like, you know, maybe you're maybe you're talking to your buddy whose girlfriend is also dudes don't really talk to each other. So you know what I mean? So we were mostly just kind of sitting there, like going, so funny.

SPEAKER_03 44:52

And we are literally talking nonstop, and then it's here we are outside of wet seal, or uh it was, it was. Oh my god. I now my feet seven nine. Maybe because I'm slightly older than you, but there was this summer where we all the girls wore these jelly shoes and we called them jelly shoes. I remember they hurt our feet. Oh my god, I remember you were doing it for fashion. We totally were. I did Disneyland in my jelly shoes when I was sitting out at that dumb fountain.

SPEAKER_01 45:23

I probably had two swatches on my wrist. You know what I mean? You did, yeah. So uh I missed the swatches. We all made I I have one, but we I do too. I still have one, yeah. But we we all made sacrifices back then.

SPEAKER_03 45:37

We had our pants legs rolled up and uh you know well, the big takeaway with this AI thing is I mean, it isn't a judgment thing, but Anna Um Weiner, who wrote the last article I shared, which was from New York magazine called Love in the Time of AI Companions, she wrote this after reflecting on her research and interviews, which kind of resonated with me. She said this perhaps the promise and the pleasure of AI companions is not the illusion of another person at the end of the exchange, but the inverse, the assurance that there is no one there at all. That's what they should have at the top of the screen. There's no one here, there's no one here.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

Yeah, and on top of that, okay. So you got the you got a warning label already on it, yeah, and then every uh half hour it it it you get a pop-up that's like uh like the Netflix pop-up.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

Are you still engaged in this this conversation with a machine?

SPEAKER_01 46:42

We still engaged? Is this still a thing that's going on? Yeah, yes, I think that I think you just solved it, Jesse. Well, you can't tell me that they don't know. You know, they say all the time, they say all the time that, like, well, we can't we you know, we can't like we can't police everything and nah.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

We don't even know, it's a black box, except for it was so funny. Anthropic was like, wait a second, your black box used some of our stuff, so now they're suing another um AI company, so now they do know it was in the black box. I'm so confused by this.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

So so if it's so if it's in a black box, how do we know? How do they steal it? You know?

SPEAKER_03 47:26

Okay, so what's our advice? Like, how do we, you know, we found again, we're not being sponsored by Substack, but we have found a really cool community of different mindsets and like throwing out opinions, and it's so vibrant there on Substack, and it it's real people making real stuff. I think that Anna Maria had Kara. She brought up Kara as a site where you can see real artists doing real things. She's killing it over there. She sure is. She's she is an amazing talent, but what are and then getting into the third um spaces, you know, it was very telling. I wanted to bring this up, is because Monique and Alex, who were on our podcast last week, I think, or the week before, they were saying that some people, when we talked about your barn sale, remember the barn sale, everybody coming together and I remember the barn. Yeah, I'll never forget the picture you sent me of your car full of stuff. But they were saying people are feeling nervous, too nervous or scared to go out and do something like that. But maybe we need to get out of our comfort zones and go do some face-to-face things like that. Maybe that would help to break this cycle of loneliness. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

Obviously, we live in times where you have to, you know, you you you can't effectively, like we were talking about earlier, just tell your kids to like go entertain themselves and and come back at dinner time. Yeah. You know, I mean, the the world's not not the world wasn't dangerous then, it's dangerous in different ways now, you know. So I I mean, I get some of that. I also get I think it's dependent on like where you go. Yeah, you know, who you're who you're hanging out with, you know? Yeah, like to put yourself in danger, it's like uh you know, I I I feel like that's that's that's specific, you know? Yeah, it is. I might have feel comfortable going to like a concert right now or a big sporting event because yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 49:28

I know, yeah. Right now is a weird thing. Maybe small things like going with a friend. Like, let's instead of being on Discord, let's just take a walk around a park in our neighborhood if they're happening in the same day.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

If there's a if there's a book fair at the library, or they got, you know, are they or are they doing karaoke at the bar or or you know, or are they doing something at the at the coffee shop? I think that dramatically decreases your chances of uh being involved in something that you know could get out of control.

SPEAKER_03 50:01

God, yeah. Yeah well, we need to get out of our comfort zone and just do some face-to-face things and even even if you're online.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

I was just thinking about it. I think even if you're online, me too. I I think you need to somehow uh do your best to make sure that you're talking to an actual real person, you know.

SPEAKER_03 50:22

Oh my god, yeah, because oh my goodness, that brought up uh I mean, it feels very doomhole-esque, but the you do have to confirm it's a real person. There were people that were following this financial investment specialist that was supposed to be some guru. And then people started asking, they're like, I think he's an AI chatbot with the visual aspect. And they started asking him, we want to see your degree. So he holds up his degree. And there were, and then they said, Now you need to count, and we want you to hold up three fingers in front of your face. And he kept fighting him. He's like, Why do you want me? How many fingers? Why do you want me to do this? This is so weird and specific. They're like, just do it. And he fought it and fought it and fought it. And he couldn't when he finally did. He had the weird AI stumpy weirdness happening in his hand. Yeah, so they knew, but uh, yeah, so ask if you think it's a bot on the other side of your conversation, ask it to count and hold up a certain number of heard, and I don't know because I don't use these things.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

I promise. Okay, don't get on me, but I'm I'm serious. Yeah, but I've heard from people who do uh go on things like uh like the the the whatever the dating apps are. Yes, that they're all those places are ate up with bots and and like AI nowadays. That's awful, and they're all trying to sell you crypto and and like uh God, that's the telly right there. Yeah, steal your identity, right? Exactly, all kinds of shit like that. So yeah, I mean, I honestly I I get it, you know. It's it it's I I do have empathy for what we're talking about because I hundred percent do it's hard to find people, it's hard to date. It would be didn't seem like it used to be this hard, but now it's you know, it's it's it it seems like it's gotten infinitely harder. And who do you trust? And you know, and how do you meet people when nobody's like going and hanging out together anymore?

SPEAKER_03 52:18

Yeah, yeah, I agree. You know, a good place is dog parks. You just walk around a dog park. Before I ever had a dog, I would just walk around a dog park and pet other people's dogs. It has to be a big dog park, not like a half block sized one where you can see everybody there because it otherwise it's kind of creepy because they're like, Where is your dog? But you can kind of pet dogs and be with people and see the interaction, and it feels so healthy for the soul.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

I don't think it's as dire as they make it sound, you know, with their talking about it, like no, like nobody's meeting anyone.

SPEAKER_03 52:49

No, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 52:50

I think they're overflowing that, but I but I also feel like it's not as easy as it was like when we were younger and we were, you know, and we were yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_03 53:00

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think that's the case for sure.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

Yeah, so I can see where people could get pulled over to okay. Well, I'll just while I'm trying to like find somebody, I'll just talk to you know, Nova or whatever, you know what I mean? People actually want to connect with other people. I don't feel like anybody is um and you know what? I take it back for you if if you if you are, if you're just like I'm done, I don't want to interact with other people anymore. I I trust me, I get that. Yeah, but um I I have to feel like you know, uh, for the human race, you know, for our planet as a whole, that people would prefer to find someone that is important, that is an actual person, you know what I mean, that they can build a life with.

SPEAKER_03 53:52

Yeah, and I think that people that have said, you know what? I'm kind of giving up on that. I feel sad because I feel like the world needs a person like you, it's waiting for a person like you to show up at different things because you add your own color to things and they're missing out.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

And Jen means the royal you, she doesn't mean me specifically. Like yeah, nobody, yeah, nobody's looking for me, but like everybody shut up.

SPEAKER_03 54:23

You're you'd be missing for the party. If you hadn't been at that cocktail thing last night, I feel like I would have been felt so silly and so alone.

SPEAKER_01 54:31

We had so much fun. I that's the first sub stack live I've ever done.

SPEAKER_03 54:34

And it was don't you feel like we could do that, Jesse?

SPEAKER_01 54:38

You and me could do a substack live. I'm already planning them out in my head.

SPEAKER_03 54:42

Good. I am so glad. That sounds so fun.

SPEAKER_01 54:45

And I gotta be honest with you, I feel like this is probably clankers that put this together, you know. Okay, but I was kind of in God, I always sound like a damn Substack commercial, but I was really impressed. Like after you're done, too, like it spits out all these, it breaks everything up into these like very easily definable clips and photos with the chat. Yeah, and you saw Rachel. Rachel's like, this is art. It is, but I mean, uh that that's the first thing that popped up for me as soon as the chat ended, and I was like, I gotta screenshot this because, like, oh, that was so cool. Like, this is like the it was clankers right here.

SPEAKER_03 55:26

I know it's I know it's there's role, there's a role for clankers. We don't want them to do everything, we don't give them our API keys, but it's fun that they summarize the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 55:35

But that's that was perfect use of like what a clanker could do. I know, I agree. Yep, I agree with you. I don't want it to paint a picture, you know. I don't want to do anything like that. But if it wants to like sure, yeah, but if it wants to organize a chat together, and you know what else we should do? And I think I talked about this, Alex and Monique the other day. Before the pandemic, okay, yeah, I had easily four friends that I've known since you know grade high school, grade school, and stuff like that that um that all became teachers, and not one of them is teaching anymore. Really? And what would what we were talking about before? Like, yeah, I I we should really we should maybe get an a teacher, an ex-teacher on here. Yeah, I know it would be such a good episode. I'll try to find one of my teacher friends that was in the thing.

SPEAKER_03 56:35

Do that. That sounds so vague. How about biscuits? He was a teacher.

SPEAKER_01 56:40

God, I can't find biscuits. We're gonna have to use the clankers to try to try to film biscuits.

SPEAKER_03 56:44

I know I don't have a subscription anymore.

SPEAKER_01 56:46

I feel like that would be a good use for uh I feel like it would be too like this. You know, I discovered the other day that I do have a subscription to the Google thing because I buy storage from them and they they give you the they give you the which I I don't ever use Chrome or right, I don't ever search with Google anymore. So I just kind of just accidentally discovered it and I was like, oh okay.

SPEAKER_03 57:11

Well, give us an update next week about biscuits. See if you can do get make any headway with that.

SPEAKER_00 57:16

I'll see what I can do.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

All right, well, until next week, guys.

SPEAKER_00 57:20

Clinkers. Bye, everybody. Fucking clankers, fucking clinkers. Fucking clankers.