Raina Cohen

more commonly in the past and exist in some cultures all over the place to not just have a small nuclear family, but maybe to have multi-generational homes or extended households where you have aunties and uncles who may or may not be related to you, but really feel like those deep connections.

playing a role in the future of these relationships i mean my best guess is that it will be a mixed bag as it currently is a mixed bag so i feel really grateful that i have a way um to be in touch with friends from all over the place i mean just the other day i had a friend um text me uh you know a photo from a place she's saying staying and that she was thinking of me she lives on the other side of the country and we only get to see each other a few times a year in person um

Or I left a voice memo on a walk yesterday for a friend of mine who lives in another city.

So I think those ways of being able to reach out or coordinate so that you can go on a trip together or whatnot, those are great ways that technology can enable or help us maintain friendships.

I think the risk comes when technology becomes a replacement for the kinds of interactions that you might otherwise have with friends.

When you're watching YouTube video after YouTube video, or you develop a parasocial relationship with someone that you haven't met, and it might feel like you are being known by

whatever the uh i work in podcasting but you know i think this can happen with podcast hosts or with television with celebrities um that it's but it's fundamentally one-sided so um i think tech can give us the illusion of having relationships when we don't and then the i think that so with this newer technologies um that around um ai tools that

are really skillful at mimicking certain aspects of human relationships.

I think one of the concerns there is that having relations is again about this one sidedness, that having relationships with real humans or even like pets

like any kind of living being, comes with some difficulties.

And I'm recalling a story that a journalist I know told where she was visiting some people who are working on these robots that they think will kind of

become friends for kids, and it's supposed to be a replacement for iPad interactions.

And this journalist was a little bit unnerved by this, and she was kind of cracking a joke about like, oh, have you guys thought about getting an AI girlfriend because she wouldn't have any needs?

And this was they'd also come up with like an AI dog that like the advantage that they said was, you know, you don't have to clean their pee or poop or train them or whatever.

No needs.

And these the people at the startup were like, didn't take it as a joke.

They were like, oh, that's that's like an interesting idea.

So I think the.

if people become used to interactions where there is nothing that they have to give up and they're getting what they want when they want it all the time, that that not only becomes a problem because it displaces time you would spend with other people, but also because

it becomes this comparison point that is impossible for any person to meet because a relationship is two-sided and it's just not always going to be simple or easy all the time.