Dear Amritsar,
I met the most amazing woman on BlueInTheFaceSky! Her name is Myrna Loy. She’s smart and funny and she is always trying to please me. Like, always. She was the first woman to ever agree with me that Hotel Transylvania was the greatest cartoon ever made. Okay, that part’s a little unnerving, to be honest. Every dog thinks he wants to catch a Stepford wife, but when he does…
And okay, she has a habit of randomly dropping non-sequiturs into conversations at the most awkward moments. Like that time she said, “Tensile strength can be defined as the maximum stress that a material can bear before breaking when it is allowed to be stretched or pulled.” in the middle of a discussion of the size of my…bank account. I wanted to chalk it up to her kooky, carefree personality, but there was something so…specific about what she said, so…clinical that I couldn’t bring myself to walk over to the pool table.
We met on Monday and got engaged on Wednesday. (I have no patience and she had the whole do anything to please me thing going.) On Friday, I met her parents: Eliza and Ask Jeeves. It turns out Myrna is an AI that was created with YakTNT. Her lack of a body need not be a problem; there are…peripherals, after all. A couple of them attached to my own body.
My problem is simpler: how do I tell my parents (who are so traditional they don’t believe in anything that happened as recently as a thousand years ago) about Myrna’s…umm…lack of physical essence?
Ankhi Dubuque
Hey, Babe,
This happens more often than you might think. Human relationships are messy – they’re like toddlers without the thrown food (unless that happens to be your fetish, and Gord bless you because food banks certainly won’t). Other people have needs and desires that can conflict with our needs and desires – selfish bastards!
It’s like that Tom Hanks movie Cast Away. You know, the one where he – Cast Away. No, it’s not a film about overenthusiastic fishermen! It’s about a man who gets stranded on a deserted island. He is there for so long, he – no, it’s not Lost! Focus, people! Focus! He is there for so long that he develops an emotional relationship with a basketball. He –
Yes. Fine. I’m talking about Space Jam! Starring Tom Hanks. My point is that a lot of people try to find an emotional connection with personae created by generative AI because they feel alienated from actual human beings in the same way that Tom Hanks missed people in – *SIGH* – Space Jam and turned to a basketball for emotional comfort and connection. So, many of us –
“AI!” despaired Founder and Executive Director of Bastard AI Governance and Safety, Canada Wyatt Tessari L’Allie (his real name). “Bastard AI!”
Excuse me, but did I ask for your opinion?
“Oh, ah, no. Sorry,” L’Allie responded. “I’m just used to being the go-to expert whenever the subject of generative artificial intelligence gets raised in an Alternate Reality News Service article.”
That may be. But that is no excuse for bad manners!
“Right. Right. You’re absolutely right. My bad,” L’Allie admitted. “Sorry for the interruption. I’ll just…uhh…get out of your way, okay? Bye.”
It’s rude interactions just like that that drive people – you should excuse the expression – into the arms of artificial intelligence!
Dear Amritsar,
Sooooo…about my parents?
Ankhi Dubuque
Hey, Babe,
Oh. Right. Your parents. Don’t tell them. It’s not worth the tsuris!
Dear Amritsar,
How is falling in love with a persona generated by artificial intelligence any different from relationships people have long had with celebrities they would never meet?
Verenica Blotzfeld
Hey, Babe,
It involves 37% more interaction and 87% less hoot owl.
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service’s sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: For those of you not steeped in film history (and indeed, what a thin cultural brew you must drink!), Myrna Loy starred in many popular films in the 1930s and 1940s, including The Thin Man Scratches an Itch, Mariachi Mambo and Mister Dreamings Builds a Bland House. The fact that you did not know this leads me to wonder if I should have wasted the Amritsar sang froid on you!