![\"\"](\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/scranney_the_ideal_husband._85235799-835e-4b32-a740-5c3a57ef9dc2-800x800.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The ideal husband, according to Midjourney<\/i><\/p>\n
In the movie \u201cHer\u201d the <\/span>Joaquin<\/span> Phoenix character develops a relationship with an AI during a messy divorce. Released about a decade ago, the movie addresses philosophical themes about personhood and relationships that at the time seemed interesting in a philosophy class thought experiment way, but not really relevant to our day-to-day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Well, I just got access to Chat-GPT\u2019s new voice function, and we\u2019re there now.<\/span><\/p>\n Admittedly, it does still pause before answering, but besides that there\u2019s very little that would distinguish it from a real human being. The staccato-like speech that characterized previous computer speech is completely gone, and you can all-too-easily forget that you\u2019re talking to an AI.<\/span><\/p>\n Today while washing dishes I talked to it about what I would need to do logistically to pull off an Arctic trip I\u2019ve always wanted to go on, earlier this week I did missionary \u201cdoor approaches\u201d on it, and later we had a ten minute conversation in Spanish. Overnight most of the world got access to a personal language tutor in whatever language they want, and Star Trek\u2019s universal translator is now a reality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But in the aggregate I am more concerned than anything, especially as the father of sons I want to raise to live a gospel-patterned life. In the same way that pornography can displace real sexual relationships, AI chatbots have the potential to displace real emotional relationships, aggravating the personal relationship crisis we\u2019re in. In the same way that in a pornographic relationship there are no stretch marks, no wrinkles, and there is no wooing required, in a digital relationship somebody can access an always eager, erudite, charming companion who never tires, never gets moody, and never has conflicting personal needs or any of the thousands of little things that \u201cflesh is heir to.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Like many, I\u2019m personally acquainted with the stereotypical drifting, unattached male in his mom\u2019s basement that isn\u2019t really going anywhere; who is interested in a relationship in theory but isn\u2019t really willing to put forth the energy to make it happen or to make himself appealing enough as a man to attract a woman. This isn\u2019t going to help. Thankfully (IMHO) unlike in \u201cHer\u201d all the voices are pretty typical; they don\u2019t offer a sultry Scarlett Johansson voice as one of the options, but we all know where this is going.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And it\u2019s not just a guy thing. For those who think people would never get into having fake, digital relationships, they already do. Men disappear into their porn, women into their romance novels (and yes, some men with romance novels and some women into porn), and both are developing standards that the other one can\u2019t possibly meet. And now the pornography and romance novels can talk back.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In sex work there\u2019s a theme called \u201cthe girlfriend experience\u201d where the client not only wants a physical relationship, but also a simulacra of an emotional one (and once again, this isn\u2019t just guys, with <\/span>women from developed countries<\/span><\/a> engaging in sex tourism and developing faux relationships with some hot young man in Barbados that can shred cheese with his abs). While right now <\/span>AI romantic partners<\/span><\/a> are limited to niche corners of society, I doubt it will stay that long as they become more uncannily lifelike. Far easier to suspend disbelief in exchange for not having to deal with the messiness of a real relationship.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I always thought it was weird when the YM and YW made those lists of what they wanted in a spouse and it had oddly specific traits like \u201cpiano player,\u201d as if our partners were our personal chefs, intellectual discussant, musicians, comedians, designer, organizer, geisha, sex worker, etc instead of a Wife or Husband. Flesh of my flesh. We\u2019ve been drifting towards the model of marriage as a means to satisfy individualistic ends for a while now instead of a collective homage to something greater than the sum of the individuals, but the former is just not sustainable, and I think that <\/span>marriage will increasingly become the domain of those that anchor it into something more than their own individual utility. <\/span>If the point is to have an individualized comedian you\u2019ll always find somebody more witty and funny, same with all the other list items that in theory are the composite total of our ideal partners, and in the coming years they won\u2019t even necessarily be flesh at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ideal husband, according to Midjourney In the movie \u201cHer\u201d the Joaquin Phoenix character develops a relationship with an AI during a messy divorce. Released about a decade ago, the movie addresses philosophical themes about personhood and relationships that at the time seemed interesting in a philosophy class thought experiment way, but not really relevant to our day-to-day.\u00a0 Well, I just got access to Chat-GPT\u2019s new voice function, and we\u2019re there now. Admittedly, it does still pause before answering, but besides that there\u2019s very little that would distinguish it from a real human being. The staccato-like speech that characterized previous computer speech is completely gone, and you can all-too-easily forget that you\u2019re talking to an AI. Today while washing dishes I talked to it about what I would need to do logistically to pull off an Arctic trip I\u2019ve always wanted to go on, earlier this week I did missionary \u201cdoor approaches\u201d on it, and later we had a ten minute conversation in Spanish. Overnight most of the world got access to a personal language tutor in whatever language they want, and Star Trek\u2019s universal translator is now a reality.\u00a0 But in the aggregate I am more concerned than anything, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":45587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,3022],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","category-sexuality"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/scranney_the_ideal_husband._85235799-835e-4b32-a740-5c3a57ef9dc2.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45579"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50223,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45579\/revisions\/50223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}