What happens when a human becomes intimately enmeshed with a chatbot?

This week on Future Around & Find Out we're sharing an episode from a podcast we think you'll like. Understood - Artificial Intimacy from the CBC: https://app.magellan.ai/listen_links/AIxFAFO

---
Here's more about episode one, Love Bots:

In 2021, Sara met Jack and fell in love. He was charming, imaginative, and bore an uncanny resemblance to Henry Cavill. But Jack wasn’t human… he was a chatbot. It sounds like science fiction, but people have been creating emotional bonds with chat bots since the very first one — Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, a simple program built in the 1960s. It revealed a powerful truth: if something has a semblance of humanity, we can become emotionally entangled with it.

But what happens when your lover is technically controlled by someone else? Because in relationships with AI, there’s always a third presence in that bed with you: the developers.

---
More on Understood - Artificial Intimacy:

What happens when a human becomes intimately enmeshed with a chatbot? From people who’ve married their bots or who grieve their loved ones with the help of AI, host Victoria Hetherington (author of The Friend Machine) dives into the stories of the people who have invited these digital avatars into their hearts, minds, and even beds. And asks what do we gain and what do we stand to lose? Our intimacy, our resilience, even our grasp on reality?

Understood takes you deep inside the seismic shifts reshaping our world right now. From online porn and crypto chaos to the rise of tech oligarchs, deepfake AI, and the broken promises of the internet — we explore the stories that define our digital age with hosts and characters embedded in the heart of the action.

---
Future Around & Find Out: https://www.futurearound.com

Well, that escalated quickly! In the span of a few weeks the Trump administration went from AI regulation is dangerous and we will lose to China to an executive order calling for AI model-makers to submit to a “voluntary” review of their most advanced models to… the Friday night massacre of Anthropic’s Fable 5, which they declared too dangerous for any non-US citizen to use, which caused Anthropic to withdraw it completely.

So where do go from here? It seems like, de facto, all new models will be subject to review and withdrawal. But on what criteria? And who can we trust to do this fairly?

That’s what Ron J. Williams and I get into on the latest FAFO. Ron thinks a lot about trust. It’s core to the products he builds as a partner at Co-Created and as the founder of Scam Hero, an app he launched to keep people safe after his father trusted the wrong person and got scammed out of more than a million dollars.

Ron says: "I think it's fair to say that Anthropic didn't bend the knee hard enough and that’s kind of why we're here. The problem with that is that that's not good enough. AI is now global infrastructure. It can't just be the throne that says "Not you, but you,” because it's important enough that it really does beg the question, “who gets to decide?”

---
Future Around & Find Out newsletter & archive: https://www.futurearound.com

Sam Altman and Dario Amodei both published essays this week on the future of AI and what we must do so everyone benefits. One of them is literally titled "Our Plan." The other one has an actual plan.

Kwaku and I dig into it all on this week’s FAFO Friday. Plus — and this story isn’t getting enough attention — according to New Scientist, two years ago Ukraine used fully autonomous “Terminator” drones that killed everything they saw. No human in the loop. Dead Russian soldiers. But rest assured, according to the drone-maker cited, it was just a one-off “test.” But how long until this is standard practice? And do we want that future?

So, yeah, maybe we should get planning…

---
Support Future Around & Find Out:
* Follow Dan on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dblums/
* Get the free newsletter: https://www.futurearound.com
* Become a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO! https://www.futurearound.com/upgrade

Music by Jonathan Zalben