Upon watching this clip, I had to ask myself as to why anyone would want an AI girlfriend only to make them imperfectly attractive, even difficult to be with. What’s wrong with dating an imperfectly attractive human right now? Are real women today so deeply undesirable and expectations for fulfillment this bleak? And for some, what purpose would we want to design a romantic companion if we ultimately can’t procreate with them (yet)? Are people drawn to the temporary stimulation of being in the presence of something synthetically arousing and beautiful so much so that they believe it could grow into something that truly substitutes organic life fulfilment?

https://x.com/tsarnick/status/1741927572978704884?s=20

I’ve heard that in some places in the world, in some far gone era, it could once be considered a romantic gesture to throw a burner cell phone through an open car window as a means of trying their luck with a new girl about to speed off.

I venture to say that one speculative application of AI relationships is that they will be burner relationships. Cruel as it may sound, expendable. Practice runs if you will. But think about it. These synthetic romantic partners could act as our life companions of sorts, nay life mentors, which will be at our disposal at various times in our lives to teach us those emotional life lessons that seem to totally escape us. After all, isn’t crafting a list of specifications and asking for the design of a robot with the intention to date it, a way of turning it into a kind of personal sound board, our emotional support, our romantic attache?

Wouldn’t it be nice if some of your relationships could only come with a predominance of upside without any of the wreckage, that is, imagine if they could mostly provide us with the opportunity to learn about ourselves.

Perhaps AI mates will be around as companions to help us reset after a human relationship, to reconfigure, and if around for longer than expected, get down to the real work of improving our individuality over time with no real strings attached. After all, as it currently is, being in a relationship is the best way of learning about yourself, even though not every partner we ever really are with will we consider to be the one.

AI partners will act as that source of emotional feedback we need to learn about life in a visceral way at every step, with every age, but the relationship can ultimately be expendable because, and this is my current bias, nothing could really substitute an organic union between two human beings.

Regardless, these AI companions will naturally have to make us cry, make us laugh, make us think and teach us about how to be in their presence. But what’s most difficult is that they will have to make us truly believe they have skin in the game, they must be believable and be believably committed. And yet, perhaps for some of us, that may not matter.