Would chatting with an AI
Would chatting with an AI make you feel less lonely?
It could be a dangerous idea.
Loneliness has become, in recent years, like an actual epidemic.
After the COVID pandemic, many people who spent it mostly solo show the toll of a lonely time; mental health issues are rising. But it’s not only about the COVID pandemic, and it’s not just an individual problem. There is a trend coming from decades ago, as Noreena Hertz (author of the book “The Lonely Century”) points out: just comparing the lyrics of songs composed in the last decades, the use of pronouns “you” and “we” have declined in favor of “I,” indicating a more individualistic mindset leading to isolation.
If you sometimes feel lonely, you are not alone. Loneliness has become a collective health problem to the point that Vivek Murthy (author of the book “Together”) found out that most Americans struggle with it, which becomes a generalized health problem related to increased risk of depression, anxiety, cardiovascular illness, dementia, and sleep disturbances.
With such dire loneliness problems, it’s just natural that some well-meaning technologists have proposed using friendly robots, voice assistants, and more to curb isolation. In this post, I discuss several specific proposals, some of which shocked me as dystopian and some that could make sense.
ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot from OpenAI, has been found to be useful for hundreds of applications that range from writing promotional copy to generating business ideas. For sure, some ChatGPT uses are more for showing what can be done rather than for a real utility, and it has been pointed out that any application that needs accuracy or where errors can have consequences are not a good candidate for a ChatGPT use, due to its extremely low reliability.
What about chatting with ChatGPT for the sake of talking?
Well, not really for chatting per se, but for interacting with anybody. This is supposedly better than complete isolation.
For instance, Replika is a GPT-3 based product supposed to be an “AI companion who cares,” in the company’s words.
Come on, you and I know that an AI product is a computer program, and it can’t feel –even less can care! The idea is so ridiculous that I can’t imagine somebody being able to believe it.
Furthermore, Replika’s promotional materials suggest using their product for “people who are lonely, depressed, or have few social connections.”
Apart from the fact that Replika’s utility hasn’t been rigorously tested by professional psychologists, its use for depressed people should issue a red flag: putting a computer program as a substitute for actual human connection looks like a recipe for a downward spiral into depression.
Personally, I wouldn’t feel engaged or happy interacting with a machine with no human in the loop. For me, it would be like faking to talk, just performing an arid useless mechanical operation with no sense whatsoever. I’d rather play with my Yorkies –at least they’ll show some authentic emotion!
And I’m not alone in perceiving interaction with machines as arid: Rob Morris of Koko, a mental health provider, put on Twitter:
“We provided mental health support to about 4,000 people using GPT-3. Once people learned the messages were co-created by a machine, it didn’t work. Simulated empathy feels weird, empty.”
More human (or less dystopic) options
The perspective of interacting with a computer because I’d have nobody else to talk to sends chills down my spine. But what if, instead of interacting with the computer directly, it helps us to find genuine human connection? Let’s explore some ideas in this line:
1) Use AI matchmaking to put people in contact with one another.
2) Use AI as a facilitator for human interaction.
The first idea is to challenge the assumption that you have nobody to interact with.
Several decades ago, many single or divorced people found a way of getting a partner with web dating services like eHarmony, Match, and others. Now some of them use AI to make recommendations. AI has been and could be helpful as a matchmaker that suggests putting people in contact with each other.
This is a better use of AI than simulating human interaction in a computer chat system.
The second idea is to use AI to facilitate human meetings.
I have participated in language exchanges where two people talk over the internet to learn a language. Once you give obvious info about your background, the food you like, and so on, the conversation engagement tends to go down. This was confirmed in a conversation I had with the owner of a big language-learning company.
But now, imagine a conversation enhanced by a voice assistant with expertise in promoting exchanges, very much like a ChatGPT variant trained for the task. There would be not two but three participants in the conversation, with the voice assistant in the background, only participating when the conversation gets stuck, or it detects an opportunity for spicing it up with jokes and additional questions. Let’s make this more palpable with an example of “facilitated” conversation:
- Hi Beto, nice to meet you; where are you from?
- Hello Oulaya, I’m from Colombia, and you?
- (Oulaya) I’m from Ghana.
(silence…)
- (Assistant) Beto, do you live in a big city in Colombia or the countryside?
- (Beto) I live near Medellin.
- (Oulaya) I read about Medellin some time ago; what was it?
- (Beto) Perhaps it was about Pablo Escobar, the drug lord.
- (Oulaya) Not sure…
(silence…)
- (Assistant) I’m getting scared with the cartel talking… What else is Medellin famous for? What are the main attractions?
- (Beto) Well, Medellin is a beautiful place (…and so on, you get the idea…)
One argument for including facilitators in a human conversation is that isolated people tend to have weak conversation skills than connected people. In the opinion of the psychologist John Cacioppo, author of the book “Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection,” lonely people are in a hypervigilant state that messes up with their natural connection instincts because they imagine hidden threats in every situation. But a conversation assistant would incorporate conversational “best practices” into the mix, resulting in a more pleasant and relaxed experience for the humans in the interaction (to be proven, of course.)
Final thoughts
I have advocated in previous blog posts for the creative use of Generative AI tools and applications, but not all creative ideas are equally valid.
Chatting with a machine just for the sake of chatting looks to me like one of the most useless and boring activities I can think of. Even worse, promoting it as a way of helping depressed people is dangerous and perhaps immoral.
In his post “How AI Can Help With the Loneliness Epidemic,” Alberto Romero argues that for some people, chatting with a robot can be not the best choice but their only choice. I think it could be the case from an individual perspective; for sure many people out there feel they don’t have any friends to talk to.
But using conversational bots to enhance human communication could be a practical option. As you perhaps heard, Steve Jobs once compared the human-enhancing capabilities of computers with bicycles, which make you go much faster and farther than just waking. Let’s hope that the tremendous power of conversational AI will be used for good.
