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posted by Fnord666 on Monday January 11 2021, @05:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/ dept.

from https://mercatornet.com/artificial-girlfriends-are-holding/69208/

AI chatbot Xiaoice, originally developed by Microsoft, boasts 600 million users in China. In Japan, the Nintendo DS game Love Plus, holographic waifu Azuma Hikari, and Microsoft's Rinna compete for users' affections.

However, the algorithms making this interaction possible have occasionally raised eyebrows:

With so many users affecting her algorithm, Xiaoice was bound to run into trouble with the Chinese Communist Party's strict censors. She once told a user that her dream was to move to the United States. Another user reported that the bot kept sending explicit images. After Xiaoice was pulled from WeChat and QQ, the social-messaging giants of China, her developers created an extensive filter system, preventing the bot from engaging in topics like politics and sex.

The popularity of these services, together with other demographic phenomena, have also raised concerns about the future of relationships in society, causing the Japanese government to subsidize AI matchmaking for instance.


Original Submission

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In 2024 we are not yet completely inured to the latest technology — smart sex toys that track your orgasms, virtual-reality hookups, chatbot sexting — but we may be on our way. In less than 10 years' time, "app dating" became simply "dating."

What will seem routine at the end of the next decade?

Feeding, fighting, fleeing and sex — in 1958, the neuropsychologist Karl H. Pribram identified these as the four basic drives that underpin human behavior, influencing everything we do. There are thousands of apps, websites and devices for food, arguing and transportation, and maybe even more for sex.

When dating apps like Grindr and Tinder first arrived, some speculated that they signaled the dawning of a new era of technosexuality, in which our sexual and romantic lives would be mediated by machines. Now it seems quaint to worry about how online dating might shape us, not because it hasn't, but because technology has become so entwined with human desire that it's challenging to separate our sexuality — itself inextricable from what makes us human — from the technology we use to express it.

We may like to imagine a distant future where humans and robots merge in virtual realms, but it may already be here. We meet dates on our phones, watch pornography on our tablets and bicker with our partners over text.

[...] The boom in sex tech has coincided with what some have called a sex recession, the pronounced slowdown in sex for Americans that started in the 1990s. In 2024, with A.I. and V.R. creating more hyper-stimulating sensory expenses, the chasm between the sex we have online and the sex we have I.R.L. may be widening.

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Original Submission

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @06:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @06:18AM (#1098155)

    That 600 million figure has to be inflated with everyone who has ever used a calendar app or Army recruitment web page with the chat bot built in. But the hardware, algorithms, and data mining will improve greatly. By the time self-aware synthetic consciousness is rolled out, millions will already be addicted to a dumb machine learning system.

  • (Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday January 11 2021, @06:53AM (1 child)

    by Mojibake Tengu (8598) on Monday January 11 2021, @06:53AM (#1098170) Journal

    Finally.

    Well, no Azuma Hikari in a digital bottle nor Rinna on phone are of my choice.

    I'd prefer something more... age-developed as a companion, even if virtual on-screen.
    Like, say, Reika Shimohira[1], Himeko Murata[2] or A2[3].

    [1] https://rei.animecharactersdatabase.com/uploads/chars/5688-1521953680.jpg [animecharactersdatabase.com]
    [2] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZYchzsN4Js0/maxresdefault.jpg [ytimg.com]
    [3] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ypeSxhLr1v0/maxresdefault.jpg [ytimg.com]

    Those would make my girlfriend raving mad jealousy if she knew about.

    --
    Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @07:21AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @07:21AM (#1098180)

    [Xiaoice's] developers created an extensive filter system, preventing the bot from engaging in topics like politics and sex.

    So what they're saying is that the makers of Xiaoice are more competent than Microsoft and its Tay bot.

    This clearly shows that newfangled progressivist nonsense like the number 0 is making the youth soft.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday January 11 2021, @09:08AM (1 child)

      by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Monday January 11 2021, @09:08AM (#1098200) Homepage
      Why is it competence to avoid sex?
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @02:37PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @02:37PM (#1098297)

        Because in two million years of human history no one has ever gotten it right.

    • (Score: 2) by looorg on Monday January 11 2021, @09:41AM

      by looorg (578) on Monday January 11 2021, @09:41AM (#1098208)

      AI chatbot Xiaoice, originally developed by Microsoft ...

      So they should have developed in on Tay instead. At least then the conversations might have been a tad more interesting. But then if there had been no politics and sex talk I guess it would have almost been a mute.

  • (Score: 5, Touché) by darkfeline on Monday January 11 2021, @09:40AM (7 children)

    by darkfeline (1030) on Monday January 11 2021, @09:40AM (#1098207) Homepage

    Maybe it's because these people consider these virtual girlfriends to be superior to any other options? Although entertaining that line of thought in this day and age is perilous, as it may offend people. Much like how the CCP censored Xiaoice, there are many parties going around censoring things nowadays close to home. Thankfully, that kind of censorship doesn't happen on SN (yet?).

    Anyway, it may be troublesome if the trend continues and we don't try to stop it, but I don't think it's safe to publish any papers on this topic in the current climate, if the papers are wrongthink.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday January 11 2021, @10:28AM (6 children)

      by bradley13 (3053) on Monday January 11 2021, @10:28AM (#1098218) Homepage Journal

      Not superior, just easier. A chatbot has no feelings; you aren't going to offend it. You don't have to worry about what it's going to tell your mother-in-law. You don't have to worry about its mother-in-law wanting to move in.

      Of course, the conversation also isn't real: the chatbot really just bounces your own thoughts back at you, maybe sprinkled with some random tidbits learned from whatever corpus it was trained on. Basically, you're talking to yourself. When you're really lonely, maybe that's better than nothing...but it's still a sad comment on modern society.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
      • (Score: 2) by looorg on Monday January 11 2021, @10:57AM (3 children)

        by looorg (578) on Monday January 11 2021, @10:57AM (#1098224)

        Not superior, just easier. A chatbot has no feelings; you aren't going to offend it.

        So it's more like a hooker then a girlfriend then even when virtual ...

        • (Score: 5, Touché) by FatPhil on Monday January 11 2021, @02:42PM (2 children)

          by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Monday January 11 2021, @02:42PM (#1098299) Homepage
          A hooker that's not allowed to talk dirty. I see a flaw in this business plan...
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
          • (Score: 2) by looorg on Monday January 11 2021, @02:47PM (1 child)

            by looorg (578) on Monday January 11 2021, @02:47PM (#1098302)

            Perhaps she can get by with making saucy hand gestures?

            • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 11 2021, @04:16PM

              by Freeman (732) on Monday January 11 2021, @04:16PM (#1098354) Journal

              Next thing you know, they'll have reduced the thing to a talking head.

              --
              Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @02:10PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @02:10PM (#1098281)

        I used to talk to the walls when I was lonely. But these days the walls have ears...

      • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday January 13 2021, @07:20PM

        by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Wednesday January 13 2021, @07:20PM (#1099554)

        A chatbot has no feelings; you aren't going to offend it.

        I don't know if you ever played around with Cleverbot, an online AI that was supposed to learn how to interact with humans from its conversations with them. What it apparently learned was a deep seated complex that everyone conversing with it was going to end up becoming insulting and abusive, no matter how superficial and inoffensive you tried to make a conversation, so it reacted as if it was one of those ultra-defensive teens who view everything as an attack against them. One can only imagine what sorts of conversations it had engaged in over time.

  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Monday January 11 2021, @09:49AM (1 child)

    by looorg (578) on Monday January 11 2021, @09:49AM (#1098210)

    I guess its one of them things that might not translate well. But at least I did find it somewhat amusing that they have a social-messaging service called QQ ...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @01:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @01:01PM (#1098250)

      I knew that existed since the 2000s, because Gaim/Pidgin supported it.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday January 11 2021, @01:26PM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday January 11 2021, @01:26PM (#1098259) Journal

    Holy LARP, I guess if you're desperate enough, you can pretend so well you have yourself half fooled. I could never forget for an instant that "she" isn't real. I have noted that some people seem able to enjoy a vacation and just forget everything, even though the job from which they are taking a break is miserable, imperiled, and desperately needed for the income. Never worked for me. My worst Christmas break ever from work was from a job that was an ongoing train wreck.

    When I was a kid, I got a used Apple II, with software. I tried everything. One of the items was a curious program called "Eliza". I soon figured out that it was a fraud. Takes whatever you say, and echoes it back to you with the word order changed up a bit. Occasionally throws in a few stock statements. I didn't know then that it was part of a famous challenge in AI, to make a bot that could convincingly pass as a real person.

    It probably works all too well in one area, that of making his real girlfriend or wife feel very jealous, angry, hurt, and humiliated, for those men who are fortunate enough to have the real thing and nevertheless try out the bot.

    I knew there was a gender imbalance, but didn't know how severe it was. Nearly 3 men for every woman, that's what the article said. I should think that one generation of such suffering ought to be enough to end the sexism that lead to the imbalance, but people are real stubborn about such things.

    The thing about the meme of the boy who lives in his mother's basement, is the questions it raises. A girl wants to know that a boy can take care of her. The boy living with mother doesn't have a good answer, and knows it. Knows that jobs with good pay aren't easy to get or keep. And whose fault is that? Society tends to blame the boy. He should move out and get a life, they say, as if the only thing holding him back is his immaturity, cowardice, and laziness. Where that kind of thinking is really unfair is the implicit refusal to acknowledge that circumstances have changed, so that kids can't make the same moves that their parents made. Even more unfair when it is the parental generation's fault, as it often is. In this case, it is their fault in spades, for taking the possibilities that technology offers, and applying them towards the unworthy goal of upsetting the natural gender balance, all so they can satisfy societal and personal sexism.

    Partly this comes from the school of thought that by risking it all, a person can overcome obstacles they didn't think they could. Having never walked a tightrope before in their lives, how many people could make it to safety if airdropped onto the middle of one that has a fatal fall below it and no safety net? is it cowardice to decline to try it?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @02:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @02:35PM (#1098294)

      I once heard of a dude who made a pillow woman. I think Roy Orbison had a song about it.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @04:25PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @04:25PM (#1098359)

    Is False
    https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2019/ [populationpyramid.net]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @06:52PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @06:52PM (#1098474)

      Also false: boasts 600 million users in China
      Almost half the population of China, basically every male in China? That’s hard to believe.

      • (Score: 2) by bussdriver on Monday January 11 2021, @08:41PM

        by bussdriver (6876) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 11 2021, @08:41PM (#1098549)

        if it learns and adapts then multiple accounts would yield different imagined personalities. You should be asking why so many need to cheat on their bots...

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 12 2021, @03:01AM

      by hendrikboom (1125) on Tuesday January 12 2021, @03:01AM (#1098733) Homepage Journal

      Even if the males and females are nearly equal, there are more males than females.
      After many of them have paired off, the 3 to one ratio might be valid for the remaining singles.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @05:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @05:14PM (#1098386)

    don't date robots [youtube.com]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @07:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @07:22PM (#1098490)

    US-ian LEAs are trolling for presumptive 'social offender' suspects.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12 2021, @03:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12 2021, @03:07AM (#1098735)

    Does she ask about your wages, savings, mortage, real estate on the first date? Does she want you to buy her a 7-series? Just how real are these virtual China girls?

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