These questions are inspired by, although heavily modified, the game Detroit: Become Human. The game itself is a story telling masterpiece, a visual marvel and quite an important game to have been made in this format, if you ask me. Anyhow!
Answer, if you will, based on both the current state of artificial intelligence and how you imagine it to be in the future.
- Would you let artificial intelligence take care of your children?
My answer: no. Not now, not ever, unless we somehow could be certain that the artificial intelligence in question is capable of the same level of empathy, self sacrifice and understanding of paralinguistic information as humans. Which we can never be, I think?
- Could you have a romantic, platonic or other relationship that imitates interpersonal relationships with artificial intelligence?
My answer: I am unsure. I don't known whether it's a fair comparison, but I'd like to liken it either to consuming pornography and using sex dolls - consumption and usage being the keywords - or to buying sex, renting a partner for a day and such transactional relationships. I have no experience of the latter, so this might be prejudicial. Who knows, maybe I'd get hooked like that man I once saw on the news who exclusively has relationships with sex dolls...
- Do you believe that artificial intelligence will ever gain consciousness?
My answer: this might contradict my answer to the first question, and borrow some sentiments from my answer to the second question - but also judging from how people interact with LLMs nowadays - as far as our perception of it goes, "yes". Perhaps in the same way that I think that the debate over whether there is true altruism or not is pointless since an act that benefits its recipient results in those benefits being perceived as such regardless of its intent, as long as we perceive artificial intelligence as, well, intelligent or conscious or humanlike to a sufficient degree, we won't bother to see the difference in a lot of everyday situations.
What do YOU think? ๐
Romantic relationships with AI dove tails nicely into the phenomenon of rising divorce rates among the working class. And using AI to rear children is an extension of the trend where the professional managerial class is seen as the vanguard of family values. Working class will be told to use AI to raise their children because they can't afford an actual human, that's reserved for the PMC and the elite who "know better" how to rear children.
Quite the analysis! From it I draw parallells to the ruling class blaming the working class for not living an environmentally friendly life, while - of course - the ruling class hold the means to such a lifestyle. Blame the financially challanged for not driving electric cars, for not eating ecological produce, for not eating vegan, for not having children, the list goes on...