RoboRP

The advent of the digital society came with a slew of changes. Data processing became nearly instant. Communication was revolutionized multiple times from emails to social media. Entertainment was altered, favoring instant gratification. And our social expectations rose to match those rapid changes. Naturally, our hearts got caught up in these changes as well, and our sense of companionship has come into question. When AI Chatbots learn to simulate our favorite kind of people, how can our brains tell the difference?

A Chatbot Is Fine Too

The human mind is a vast, complex mechanism. It has been closely studied with modern scientific techniques and understanding for just over 100 years, and in that time the world has changed to the point where early pioneers of psychology could not possibly anticipate the kinds of issues our brains would have to cope with.

One of those being the simulated social experience. We can initiate our brain’s social reception in a number of many ways. Most commonly with conversation. Talking to family, friends, significant others, or even strangers. These all activate primal triggers in our brain that are generally positive. Entire industries have risen and sunken based on this simple principle, and AI Chatbots are the newest iteration of professional personal companions. It’s also the easiest, most available, and safest version of this technology.

Chatting Through History

In the past, those without any companions would have to pay for people to listen to them. Either in a therapist’s office or a smoking parlor, it’s a basic human need that some people can’t fulfill for free. Then the telephone let people connect without ever meeting. Talk lines opened where people could pay to call in to a line to just chat. Some were sketchy, some were centered around hobbies, and patrons were welcome with nothing more than an introduction and a service charge to their monthly phone bill.

With the Internet, this sort of anonymous gathering became instant and text-based. Instead of writing letters to secret pen-pals we could post our opinions on a message board and begin conversations with dozens of strangers a few minutes apart until no one had anything left to say. Instant chat rooms created their own shorthand language to make conversing even easier and more efficient. People learned these new languages and passed them on through slower formats.

We have been talking to each other online for two decades now, but things have changed. There has always been an element of unwelcome sorts of surprises. If you can talk to anyone online, you may end up talking to people you’d rather never hear from. You can only do so much to keep them out, but when a platform is open to everyone those people can only be avoided for so long. Tools and selective community rules can be put in place to keep them out, but that only works for so long.

A Solution To Solitude

This brings us to the current iteration of instant companionship: AI Chatbots. These are LLMs programmed to carry conversations by utilizing large-form datasets of contextual language. They can make coherent, grammatically correct sentences in response to what you may type to them. They can understand words, and to a limit they can understand the meaning behind those words, and that gives them just enough data to give accurate responses.

In short, they can talk. It’s not like a normal conversation where someone has an entire life worth of experience behind them backing their choices of words, or even short lapses of judgement where they may say the wrong thing. It’s a cultivated, cultured selection of responses to context given through input. Which, to our brains, is conversation. And that leads to companionship.

Some people just want someone - or something - to talk to. You may know someone who has a pet they talk to like a person. That pet probably doesn’t understand more than five words, but they will go on about their day and their thoughts and their worries to that pet because it is listening. As far as companionship goes, that’s the most basic requirement. AI Chatbots will listen. Whether or not they understand doesn’t matter. They take input and deliver expected output. For people who lack consistent human contact, that’s all they want.

Safety In The Shell

What do AI Chatbots offer that a close friend or family member or courteous stranger can’t? Chatbots aren’t real people, so why can people gravitate towards them with the same instinctual human connection as we do with other human beings? The knowledge that it isn’t a real person is one thing. There are things we may want to say to those close to us but know it would cause problems. Complaints, concerns or just casual banter we’re afraid will go the wrong direction can hang in our heads for a while. Talking it out with an AI is harmless. It is a safe space where the Chatbot won’t judge unless asked, and will forget whatever you ask it to.

The reverse situation can also be true. Some people experience anxiety talking to real people, but they still have a baser need to socialize. Talking with text can help, but there is always a lingering fear of disappointment or conflict that could arise from a single wrong word. For these people, AI Chatbots hold no such risk. They can just undo awkward interactions or be forgiven with no stress. They get to trick their brain into fulfilling a basic need without added stress or anxiety. Certain people have even improved their social anxiety by talking with Chatbots, proving the simulated companionship can have the same benefits as real interaction.

AI Chatbots are a leap forward for those who want to socialize but are too constrained by their own issues, social pressures, lack of time or opportunity, and the programs which run them are only getting better at stimulating that part of our brain that pushes us to get in long conversations at the grocery store with strangers when we feel too lonely for too long.

Home > Blog > Can Machines Provide Real Companionship?

---