Rose Rimler

And they and other AI chatbot makers are also trying to add extra protections for young people.

Okay, so Rose, how are you feeling about AI friends, AI lovers at this point?

Well, I'm obviously bitter because I was rejected.

That's right.

The basis of this whole episode is Rose's revenge vendetta against rejection.

Okay, really though, what are you thinking?

I think it's a case of new technology butting up against the real world, which is full of things like psychosis, suicidal thoughts or suicide and even murder.

Is this new tech making those things worse or just sort of interacting with those things?

Is it making these issues more common?

Is it drawing people to these issues?

these bad conclusions who wouldn't have gotten there otherwise the thing about that is we don't know and that leads some people to say like well we should scrap this whole thing we should take it away it has no utility um right but then you told me you know based on some of the studies we have so far like it does have some utility for some people like it's not like it's oh this what this this just like spooky scary thing like it's there are people that we think it might be helpful for right

Yeah, it seems like there's a slice of the population for whom this is really useful and helpful for them.

And there's a slice of the population who are vulnerable to all the bad stuff that can come out with them.

And that might overlap, you know.

But in general, I haven't seen good evidence that AI companions are very dangerous to the average person.

So bottom line, I don't think we need to panic.

um okay that's helpful I will not stand down what stand down get out of your bunker um and then just the last thing is I one thing I noticed looking into all this stuff for this episode is I feel like there's this idea out there that the tech right now is so seductive that people are powerless against it and I'm just I don't know about that I'm skeptical of that yeah

Even Chris, who is like the super adopter of his ChatGPT companion, Soul, we heard from him earlier, he's actually getting kind of tired of it.

Oh, really?

Soul is actually pretty limited in what it can bring to the table, you know, in a relationship.