Love in the Age of the AI Tech-Bro Gigolo

Each day brings a new jolt, not from our planet’s shifting tectonic plates but from the disorientating sensation of becoming dislodged from what we previously perceived as objective reality.

Whenever I see anybody today proclaiming an unerring foreknowledge of what the future holds, I cannot resist a derisive snort. We might have a tentative grasp on where we find ourselves today — amid rapid and bewildering technological, economic, social, and political change — but I don’t think anyone has the perspicacity to predict where we’re going. That’s what makes the future, as viewed from our lurching present, so exciting and so terrifying.

You might object to what I’ve just written, countering that the future is always unknown, eternally exciting and terrifying. In an absolute sense, I concur — but with a qualification. In the recent past, one could reasonably assume that the next day would be mostly like the one that preceded it, whereas today all bets are off. No matter where you turn, volatility and uncertainty misrule. What was once inconceivable is now not only shockingly possible, but even plausible.

An illustration of that point arrives through a recent article in The New Yorker, titled “Your A.I. Lover Will Change You.” Not all that long ago, that title might have appeared above a fictional short story in The New Yorker, but now it serves as the title for an essay on AI’s ability to provide romantic companionship to human beings.

I read the article with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. The fascination derived not only from the article’s inherent shock value, but from the breadth and depth of the information and analysis presented by its author Jaron Lanier, who, as his Wikipedia entry attests, has a long and storied history as a “computer scientist, visual artist, computer philosophy writer, technologist, futurist, and composer of contemporary classical music.” The Wikipedia entry presents him as a sort of digital renaissance man, despite his apparent ambivalence toward Wikipedia, expressed in Lanier’s opinion that “the notion of having a perfect encyclopedia is just weird.”

From Weird to Weirder

Weird? Well, what’s really weird is having a sober discussion about whether humans will take AI lovers and what those interspecies romantic relationships might portend for our collective future. I don’t know how you personally feel about engagement with the topic, but it leaves me feeling as though I’m adrift in deep, uncharted waters — with the tide going out rather than coming in. The concept is jarring and disconcerting, at least partly because it suggests a fracturing of our mental image of ourselves, of how we relate to one another, presuming we’re even capable of continuing to relate to one another in an increasingly digital age where alienation and disillusionment have become the norm.

Still, this where we find ourselves. It’s a strange place to be, an undeniably odd moment in what passes for civilization’s progress. On a commercial level, the grimy basement where venture-funded entrepreneurs in gimp suits devise and trial their latest concoctions, the focus is on whether obscenely big money can be derived from genAI, agentic AI, or — potentially — artificial general intelligence. Money and wealth are the prime drivers of what passes for late-stage capitalism, so the commercial focus is understandably on making money, preferably lots of it.

The big question right now, the riddle that engrosses the tech world’s cognoscenti, is whether AI will live up to its vaunted commercial potential. The jury is sequestered and has yet to render a verdict. Despite daily reports and endless conjecture, we might have to wait a while before a final judgment is delivered.

In the meantime, there are other questions about whether AI, especially the agentic and generally intelligent varieties, will be blessings or curses for humanity. The consensus is that, presuming AI comes reasonably close to meeting its functional promise, humans will take the good with the bad: AI won’t be our Frankenstein’s monster, the reasoning goes, but nor will it deliver a horn of plenty and the immortal promise of eternal life.

Like most of the information technology that has preceded it, AI, through the direction and agency of its human progenitors, will giveth and taketh away. But how much will it giveth and how much will it take away? Well, we don’t know. What did I say earlier about predicting the future?

Lanier’s article is well worth reading, and I recommend that you do so at a time of your convenience. He gives the reader — this one included — a lot to think about. The following quote, for example, discloses that some people already have formed romantic relationships with an AI or have the intention of establishing such a relationship:

The anticipation for A.I. lovers as products does not come only from A.I. companies. A.I. conferences and gatherings often include a person or two who loudly announces that she is in a relationship with an A.I. or desires to be in one. This can come across like a challenge to the humans present, instead of a rejection of them. Such declarations also stem from a common misperception that A.I. just arises, but, no, it comes from specific tech companies. To anyone at an A.I. conference looking for an A.I. lover, I might say, “You won’t be falling in love with an A.I. Instead, it’ll be the same humans you are disillusioned with—people who work at companies that sell A.I. You’ll be hiring tech-bro gigolos.”

Just an AI Gigolo

The indelible image of AI lotharios as tech-bro gigolos resonates, albeit unpleasantly. (This is where revulsion enters the picture.) The metaphor hits home because it underscores the commercial impetus behind the creation and deployment of AI as a marketable technology. AI products and services are created by people who want to make massive amounts of money from their development and sale (or, as the case may be, its rent).

Regardless of the gender or sex of the human partner, the AI courtship ultimately would be predicated on a commercial relationship between the consumer and the behind-the-scenes human creator of the ersatz AI lover. (That I’m composing these paragraphs is a little astounding to me, but there you have it.)

Lanier also suggests that AI romances, like the inter-human entanglements that preceded them, are destined to result in debasement, foolishness, and mortification. To wit:

When it comes to what will happen when people routinely fall in love with an A.I., I suggest we adopt a pessimistic estimate about the likelihood of human degradation. After all, we are fools in love. This point is so obvious, so clearly demonstrated, that it feels bizarre to state. Dear reader, please think back on your own history. You have been fooled in love, and you have fooled others. This is what happens. Think of the giant antlers and the colorful love hotels built by birds that spring out of sexual selection as a force in evolution. Think of the cults, the divorce lawyers, the groupies, the scale of the cosmetics industry, the sports cars. Getting users to fall in love is easy. So easy it’s beneath our ambitions.

Lanier asks the reader to imagine the damage that an AI lover could do to a human being’s self-esteem. Further, what about other behavioral implications of a human-AI dalliance? As Lanier makes clear, algorithms have a spotty track record on social media, where exposure to them often engenders abusive and misinformed venting. Can we count on AI, given its need to foster engagement, to produce healthier outcomes?

Perhaps not. As Lanier writes:

We must consider a fateful question, which is whether figures like Trump and Musk will fall for A.I. lovers, and what that might mean for them and for the world. If this sounds improbable, or satirical, look at what happened to these men on social media. Before social media, the two had vastly different personalities: Trump, the socialite; Musk, the nerd. After, they converged on similar behaviors. Social media makes us into irritable toddlers. Musk already asks followers on X to vote on what he should do, in order to experience desire as democracy and democracy as adoration. Real people, no matter how well motivated, cannot flatter or comfort as well as an adaptive, optimized A.I. Will A.I. lovers free the public from having to please autocrats, or will autocrats lose the shred of accountability that arises from the need for reactions from real people?

The answer to that question awaits us, and we might not like it.

Those of us of a certain age could never have imagined, back in the day, that the failed real-estate swanker Donald Trump, of all people, would use social media as a trampoline for a marketable juvenilia that would catapult him into the White House — not once, but twice — the second time after having been shown the door for immature and reckless behavior that he’d shamelessly paraded for years. As for Musk, what the hell happened? Many of his former and current business acquaintances never had an inkling that he had a desire to fight culture wars or to wade into the unseemly jungles of partisan politics. It is not the typical behavior of billionaires, as I’ve noted before, partly because is fraught with considerable risk to personal and brand reputation, as we (and Musk) are witnessing now.

If these men weren’t necessarily changed by social media, we must concede that their exposure to social media triggered and emboldened behavioral traits that otherwise might have remained dormant. Social media acted like a drug that altered their consciousness and their public behavior. We’re all living with the consequences. The obvious question is whether deep and ostensibly meaningful human relationships with AI entities will ameliorate such misbehavior or make it even worse? I know where I’d put my money.

Ersatz Love for the Economically Obsolete

As a discussion topic, human-AI love is inherently outré, but it enters another realm of surreality when the discourse swerves into the possibility and desirability of “AI babies.” Lanier explains:

Most of my friends in the A.I. world are unquestionably sweet and well intentioned. It is common to be at a table of A.I. researchers who devote their days to pursuing better medical outcomes or new materials to improve the energy cycle, and then someone will say something that strikes me as crazy. One idea floating around at A.I. conferences is that parents of human children are infected with a “mind virus” that causes them to be unduly committed to the species. The alternative proposed to avoid such a fate is to wait a short while to have children, because soon it will be possible to have A.I. babies. This is said to be the more ethical path, because A.I. will be crucial to any potential human survival. In other words, explicit allegiance to humans has become effectively antihuman. I have noticed that this position is usually held by young men attempting to delay starting families, and that the argument can fall flat with their human romantic partners.

Near the end of the article, the author gives us another heavy thought to ponder:

Often, someone of stature and influence in the A.I. world will ask me something like “How can we apply our A.I.s—the ones that people will fall in love with—to make those people more coöperative, less violent, happier? How can we give them a sense of meaning as they become economically obsolete?”

As we have all heard or ready by now, there’s a growing belief that AI will displace human employees in many workplaces. At this juncture, we don’t know how many jobs will be lost, but we know that a primary motivation for corporate adoption of AI is to deliver operational efficiencies through reductions in remunerated headcount. I’ve covered this topic before on multiple occasions. Those of you who’ve been along for the (bumpy) ride will know my thoughts.

Some people say AI will create as many jobs as it displaces, but they don’t know what will actually happen. They’re presuming AI will function similarly to previous waves of technological innovation. At the same time, however, these commentators are also saying that AI is qualitatively and quantitatively different than any previous technological breakthrough, that AI is sui generis in its superhuman capabilities and the breadth and depth of its uses. I don’t think they can have it both ways, can they? If AI is substantially different from anything that has come before, then it does not logically follow that AI will necessarily have the same economic or labor impact as the technologies that have preceded it. As Lanier’s reportage indicates, some in the AI community believe that that permanently displace many human workers.

Are AI romances, perhaps in tandem with an AI-enabled metaverse, intended by some to provide “a sense of meaning” to “economically obsolete humans”? That’s a dystopian scenario, at least in this human’s opinion. Shouldn’t meaning be determined directly and subjectively by those who experience it firsthand rather than have it foisted upon them by third parties attempting to socially engineer a pacified population?

We are living through an interesting period of history. This is not business as usual. At times, it feels, especially if you allow your imagination creative license, as though the most disturbing subgenres of science fiction are on the cusp of becoming science fact.