‘Better than a real man’: young Chinese women turn to AI boyfriends::Twenty-five-year-old Chinese office worker Tufei says her boyfriend has everything she could ask for in a romantic partner: he’s kind, empathetic, and sometimes they talk for hours.
As a man all I can say is “fair enough”.
Just end us already
Line forms behind me.
TBF we haven’t set the bar particularly high.
Removed by mod
old, buried underground and forgotten?
Removed by mod
From what I understand there is a shortage of women in China compared to men due to the one child policy and most parents wanting sons so that makes a bad problem even worse.
If men did this they would be labeled pathetic…
Men do this and a company straight up profited from it until they tried to go back to be sponsor friendly and gimped their AI personas service
Ashley Madison?
I’m guessing Replika.
You’re 100% correct lol. Men who do this are roundly mocked and called sad creepy incels.
That said, the culture and dating scene for women in China is pretty awful. My ex was Chinese and had some awful dating stories, now she avoids dating Chinese men.
We need to learn to be a little less mean to anybody who uses these apps. They’re likely doing it because they see little alternative, yet still want affection. Calling them losers, be they male or female, achieves nothing other than hurting them.
Only thing it does is makes mean people feel better about themselves by punching down.
We do and it is.
Aren’t we already with this? I never see anyone going “You go queen!” over someone’s virtual bf
This is relatively novel, give it time…
I did see that response to “sologamy” articles - women marrying themselves.
If all you want is attention and you’re not willing to reciprocate, then yeah, maybe computer is your best hope.
Maybe it’s more like not able rather than not willing. As someone in a happy relationship that can’t imagine my life without it, relationships are hard, and modern life is hard.
I mean, may they be happy. If they are not ready or able to commit to a relationship, but they need comfort in our increasingly lonely world, this may be a band-aid. A good solution would be to find out why people are lonely in the first place, and address it.
Is it loneliness or is it selfishness? They could get conversation online. This is a specific kind of “all about you” experience.
I’m not really arguing against it. If a person is happier having those emotions generated by a computer, good for them.
It’s kind of like porn, or a romance novel. Sometimes fiction is better than reality.
This was literally a joke in 30 Rock: Pay per view “porn for women” where it was literally just a hot guy saying into the camera “Tell me how your day was”, “I think you were right”, and “Well it’s his loss”
Talk for hours with an Ai? No thanks, sounds like torture… Unless you count problem solving with code discussions…
Everyone wants the fiction. Nobody wants someone else’s problems.
Sounds like what they actually want in a man is a therapist.
A savvy young man might take note that “listening” is a desired trait in boyfriends.
Fair
Things like this make me wonder if the uncanny valley exists because we’ve previously developed computer technology in the past, and it destroyed civilization, taking with it everyone who couldn’t easily distinguish between humans and AI.
Awesome plot basis
I like to think uncanny valley exists because of other homo species we would have interacted with in pre-history. Obviously this is just a fun theory since we have evidence of mixing.
The simple explanation I’ve heard is that the uncanny valley protects us from diseases etc. by making us stay away from very sick or dead people. A bloated corpse is still human, so you need some part of your head to say “stay away from that thing”.
Or genetic defects.
“Something about that person is extremely off-putting. I do believe I’m not going have sex with them.”
Some of the modern recreations of neanderthals look like people I’ve seen in bars.
On a cold night after a few handfuls of fermented berries … I probably would too.
These headlines are more often just native ads for the apps being reported on. Don’t lose sleep over an eyeball-grabbing “techxplore.com” article based on a handful of testimonials from alpha users.
or one woman, anyway.
If an AI friend is “better” than a normal friend, it looks like something in the social environment is seriously broken.
I mean, it will be. The AI friend is always available, always knows what to say, never fights with you, and never messes up (ideally).
However, all those things are part of the human element: and at the end, you’re still talking to a computer. The AIs are just trying to please you. A person can actually love you, and that’s something else. And I’d take that over the perfect chatbot any day.
The AI friend is always available, always knows what to say, never fights with you, and never messes up (ideally).
And isn’t that what people really want in a relationship? A perfect, frictionless yes-person trained to parrot whatever you wanted to hear six weeks ago.
The AIs are just trying to please you.
Its a bit worse than that. Monetized social media is designed to provoke engagement. So the AI isn’t trying to please you, its trying to maximize your utilization. That means establishing a clingy, desperate, attention seeking (ie, toxic) relationship that keeps you looking at your phone for as long as possible.
Its pleasurable in the same way a heroin addiction is pleasurable.
our brains didn’t evolve to need total compliance and total agreement from relating, tho. it’s more a sign of problems with society and too much isolation.
people love to abuse each other, and those who wish to live peaceful life become more distanced from social environment, my grandma said back in the day that “in her times there were no abuse and crime” i was like, yeah right, there wasn’t internet back then where people could refugee to, so everyone has only one choice, and that’s to be silent and endure
Damn, is Jordan S Peterson dubbed into Chinese then?
Saddest comment section below, damn
It’s like Joi from Blade Runner 2049.
Joi could phase into a hooker so you could fuck her. We’re not there… yet
we are, if you’re rich enough, or so i’ve read…
You look lonely. I can fix that.
