Using the tiny, battery-free brain implant device, the team were able to program and deprogram mice to socially interact with each other in real-time. When two or more mice had their devices switched on, they interacted much more than usual, and when the device was switched off, the opposite effect was nearly immediate. Read more
Category Archives: dating
SexTech White Papers from École des Mines de Saint-Étienne
When Grown-Ups Have Imaginary Friends
When Grown-Ups Have Imaginary Friends https://nyti.ms/3eTjSkL
Future romance: how science fiction is predicting our relationships
The contemplative indie Marjorie Prime is the latest in a long line of sci-fi films and TV shows that explore how we might date and love in the future
AI is the perfect sounding board for these modern anxieties about human connection, and 20th- and 21st-century films are filled with dystopian landscapes that showcase the loneliness of a world where intimacy is something you can buy. Read more (The Guardian)
Deepfakes and the future they can distort
Her and the Future of Human social Relationships
The U.S. Birthrate Has Dropped Again. The Pandemic May Be Accelerating the Decline.
“It’s a big social change in the U.S.,” said Alison Gemmill, a demographer at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies fertility. “A gradual shift of family formation to later ages.” Read more (NY Times)
I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now my parents think we’re getting married
In this session, we discuss “I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now my parents think we’re getting married,” a fiction story about artificial romance by Fonda Lee. In Lee’s story, a young man who wants a fake girlfriend to get his parents off his back finds the fake relationship has consequences he hadn’t anticipated. We will examine the consequences that result when chatbots become good enough to turn to for our emotional needs, and even for relationships. Read more (MIT)
Chatbot Gone Awry Starts Conversations About AI Ethics in South Korea
In Spike Jonze’s 2013 film, “Her,” the protagonist falls in love with an operating system, raising questions about the role of artificial intelligence (AI), its relationship with the users, and the greater social issues emerging from these. South Korea briefly grappled with its “Her” moment with the launch of the AI chatbot, “Lee Luda,” at the end of December 2020. But the Luda experience was not heart-wrenching or pastel-colored like “Her” – instead, it highlighted different types of phobia and risks posed by new technologies that exist within South Korean society. Read more (The Diplomat)
Meet the chatbot that simulates a teen experiencing a mental health crisis
In digital conversation, Riley is a young person who is trying to come out as genderqueer. When you message Riley, they’ll offer brief replies to open-ended questions, sprinkle ellipses throughout when saying something difficult, and type in lowercase, though they’ll capitalize a word or two for emphasis.
Riley’s humanness is impressive given that they’re a chatbot driven by artificial intelligence to accomplish a unique goal: simulate what it’s like to talk to a young person in crisis so that volunteer counselors can become skilled at interacting with them and practice asking about thoughts of suicide. Read more (Mashable)
