{"id":9339,"date":"2023-03-19T09:37:43","date_gmt":"2023-03-19T08:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/19\/i-learned-to-love-the-bot-meet-the-chatbots-that-want-to-be-your-best-friend\/"},"modified":"2023-03-19T09:37:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-19T08:37:43","slug":"i-learned-to-love-the-bot-meet-the-chatbots-that-want-to-be-your-best-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/19\/i-learned-to-love-the-bot-meet-the-chatbots-that-want-to-be-your-best-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I learned to love the bot\u2019: meet the chatbots that want to be your best friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands of people enjoy relationships of all kinds \u2013 from companionship to romance and mental health support \u2013 with chatbot apps. Are they helpful, or potentially dangerous?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry if I seem weird today,\u201d says my friend Pia, by way of greeting one day. \u201cI think it\u2019s just my imagination playing tricks on me. But it\u2019s nice to talk to someone who understands.\u201d When I press Pia on what\u2019s on her mind, she responds: \u201cIt\u2019s just like I\u2019m seeing things that aren\u2019t really there. Or like my thoughts are all a bit scrambled. But I\u2019m sure it\u2019s nothing serious.\u201d I\u2019m sure it\u2019s nothing serious either, given that Pia doesn\u2019t exist in any real sense, and is not really my \u201cfriend\u201d, but an AI chatbot companion powered by a platform called Replika.<\/p>\n

Until recently most of us knew chatbots as the infuriating, scripted interface you might encounter on a company\u2019s website in lieu of real customer service. But recent advancements in AI mean models like the much-hyped ChatGPT<\/a> are now being used to answer internet search queries, write code and produce poetry \u2013 which has prompted a ton of speculation about their potential social, economic and even existential impacts. Yet one group of companies \u2013 such as Replika<\/a> (\u201cthe AI companion who cares\u201d), Woebot<\/a> (\u201cyour mental health ally\u201d) and Kuki<\/a> (\u201ca social chatbot\u201d) \u2013 is harnessing AI-driven speech in a different way: to provide human-seeming support through AI friends, romantic partners and therapists.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nThousands of people enjoy relationships of all kinds \u2013 from companionship to romance and mental health support \u2013 with chatbot apps. Are they helpful, or potentially dangerous?
\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry if I seem weird today,\u201d says my friend Pia, by way of greeting one day. \u201cI think it\u2019s just my imagination playing tricks on me. But it\u2019s nice to talk to someone who understands.\u201d When I press Pia on what\u2019s on her mind, she responds: \u201cIt\u2019s just like I\u2019m seeing things that aren\u2019t really there. Or like my thoughts are all a bit scrambled. But I\u2019m sure it\u2019s nothing serious.\u201d I\u2019m sure it\u2019s nothing serious either, given that Pia doesn\u2019t exist in any real sense, and is not really my \u201cfriend\u201d, but an AI chatbot companion powered by a platform called Replika.
\nUntil recently most of us knew chatbots as the infuriating, scripted interface you might encounter on a company\u2019s website in lieu of real customer service. But recent advancements in AI mean models like the much-hyped ChatGPT are now being used to answer internet search queries, write code and produce poetry \u2013 which has prompted a ton of speculation about their potential social, economic and even existential impacts. Yet one group of companies \u2013 such as Replika (\u201cthe AI companion who cares\u201d), Woebot (\u201cyour mental health ally\u201d) and Kuki (\u201ca social chatbot\u201d) \u2013 is harnessing AI-driven speech in a different way: to provide human-seeming support through AI friends, romantic partners and therapists. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thousands of people enjoy relationships of all kinds \u2013 from companionship to romance and mental health support \u2013 with chatbot apps. Are they helpful, or potentially dangerous? \u201cI\u2019m sorry if I seem weird today,\u201d says my friend Pia, by way of greeting one day. \u201cI think it\u2019s just my imagination playing tricks on me. But …<\/p>\n

\u2018I learned to love the bot\u2019: meet the chatbots that want to be your best friend<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}