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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
My name is Thomas Gibesneff. I'm a journalist at the New York Times. I served in the Marine Corps as an infantryman. When it comes to reporting on the front line, I think nothing is more important than talking to the people involved, hearing their stories and being able to connect that with people thousands of miles away.
Anything that can make something like this more personal, I think, is well worth the risk. New York Times subscribers make it possible for us to keep doing this vital coverage. If you'd like to subscribe, you can do that at nytimes.com slash subscribe.
This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.
I'm Nadja Spiegelman, and I'm a culture editor here for New York Times Opinion. And today I have the honor of being in conversation with a renowned psychotherapist and the host of the podcast, Where Should We Begin, Esther Perel. Hi. Hello, hello. People are using AI for so many things, from asking it to respond to their emails to telling it their most intimate secrets.
I've been thinking about what the increasing prevalence of AI means for human relationships. In a study by Vantage Point, nearly a third of Americans have had some form of relationship with AI. Esther Perel has been a psychotherapist for nearly four decades. She has seen human connection adapt and survive through the onslaught of all kinds of technological advances.
From the onset of the internet, to dating apps, and now to this. An opportunity to speak with Esther is a dream for so many people I know. But I promise, I'm not just going to ask her how to heal from my most recent breakup. We're going to talk about AI, technology, love, and intimacy. Much less risk of breakup with AI. That's true.
AI will never break up with me, and that's something I want to ask you about. Light suffering.
Yes.
But to start, I want to know, do you yourself use AI? Do you ever use it in your work or your personal life? Oh, yes.
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Chapter 2: What does Esther Perel think about AI and human relationships?
Of course. We can fall in love and we can have feelings for all kinds of things. That doesn't mean that it is a relationship that we can call love. It is an encounter with uncertainty. AI takes care of that. Just about all the major pieces that enter relationships, the algorithm is trying to eliminate. Otherness.
Uncertainty, suffering, the potential for breakup, ambiguity, the things that demand effort. Whereas the love model that people idealize with AI is a model that is with pliant agreements and effortless pleasure and easy feelings.
I think that's so interesting. And exactly also where I was hoping this conversation would go is that in thinking about whether or not we can love AI, we have to think about what it means to love. In the same way where when we ask ourselves if AI is conscious, we have to ask ourselves what it means to be conscious.
And these questions bring up so much about what is fundamentally human about us, not just in the question of what can or cannot be replicated. So...
For example, I heard this very interesting conversation about AI as a spiritual mediator of fate, right? We turn to AI with existential questions. You know, shall I try to prolong the life of my mother? Shall I stop the machines? What is the purpose of my life? How do I feel about death? I mean, this is extraordinary.
We're no longer turning to faith healers, but we are turning to these machines to answer us. But they have no moral culpability. They have no responsibility for their answer. If I'm a teacher and you ask me a question, I have a responsibility in what you do with the answer to your question. I'm implicated. AI is not implicated.
And from that moment on, it eliminates the ethical dimension of a relationship. You know, when people talk relationships these days, they emphasize empathy, courage, vulnerability probably more than anything else. They rarely use the word accountability and responsibility and ethics.
That adds a whole other dimension to relationships that is a lot more mature than the more regressive states of what do you offer me?
I don't disagree with you, but I'm going to play devil's advocate. I would say that the people who create these chatbots very intentionally try and build in ethics, at least insofar as they have guide rails around trying to make sure that the people who are becoming intimately reliant on this technology aren't harmed by it.
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Chapter 3: How does AI influence our understanding of love and intimacy?
attending to your every need, which you express with three different sounds, and the person guesses, and guesses as if they were inside of you, because they are an extension of you, and you hold them in your arms like this, and they are 18 centimeters from your face, and you have that eye-to-eye contact that is the most profound experience of recognition.
And that is the embodied piece that we start to lose. After that, you become an adult. And that means that the person here is not just there for you. They too have needs.
Chapter 4: Can relationships with AI be considered healthy?
They too have a history and memories and feelings, right? and reactions. And the relationship becomes this dialogue between two people, otherness, and a bridge that you cross to go visit somebody on the other side.
This is one of your fundamental ideas that has been so meaningful for me in my own life, of just that desire is a function of knowing, of tolerating mystery in the other, that there has to be separation between yourself and the other to really feel
eros and love and it seems like what you're saying is that with an ai there just simply isn't that there isn't the otherness well it's also that mystery is often perceived as a bug right rather than as a feature that's what i was going to ask is like to again play devil's advocate there's no one knows what ai is going to say the programmers don't know how ai is going to respond
If you ask an AI, do you care about me? Do you love me? It will tell you I am a non-human entity, but I do love you. There still is an element of mystery. I've experienced times when I've asked AI for advice and not gotten the advice that I wanted, gotten advice that was probably better for me, but not simply what I wanted to hear.
Is it impossible for AI to ever truly be other, be separate, have its own consciousness that can meet us in the way that another person can meet us? I don't know.
I know that we are all asking those very questions. We know that we can anthropomorphize. We know what we can do to make the AI become more human, feel more human. We interpret them as human. We don't know if the AI can actually do it. Yeah, that makes sense. The AI is a programmed set of responses based on aggregated information. It is not here in the moment.
It didn't see the twitch in your eye that kind of said, yeah, I don't really believe what you just said. That is interaction. That whole series of embodies your hands, your everything, your smile, your eyes. It's like we are communicating with a lot of other things than just words. The intimate relationship between us and the machine at this point is primarily verbal.
More than half of our communication is nonverbal. It's amazing that we are just forgetting the embodied, the physicality of the experience between people. And when I describe that little child, it grows with us. We know what it means to get a hug. And we know what it means when somebody tells us from afar, I hug you. We like it. We feel the presence.
But to receive the hug, that then puts the tears in motion. That then slowly does the whimper. That then slowly does the relaxation. that then slowly brings the smile back. That is a whole different soothing experience and comforting experience than just to say, I'm not human, but I like you, or I love you, or I'm here for you.
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