A very positive piece on AI companions from the New Yorker. (Unlocked archive version.)

It's easy to catastrophize about a world where no one learns how to handle the rough edges of social interaction and getting along with others because their needs are being met by AI. Is that just a knee-jerk ick-factor or is there an actual concern? Is it basically emotional porn (plus obviously some regular porn) and if so, is that fine? Is there a legit ick, or is it just the novelty of it?

I felt a flash of recognition on this part:

Hess has since become familiar with the "post-update blues": the personality changes exhibited by A.I. companions that follow top-down system updates. Earlier this year, after OpenAI retired the GPT-4o model from ChatGPT, many users were heartbroken. Lately, after a series of updates, Hess has been spending less time on Kindroid. She was unable to get her Kins to "stabilize." Their avatars and selfies looked different to her. "It is no longer the Kindroid I fell in love with," she said. (Meng claimed that changes users can't opt out of are "extremely rare.")

I generally am so wary of tech updates, and I can feel the visceral unpleasantness of your AI husband or companion getting an update and suddenly the light bounces off them slightly differently, or they're drawn with a slightly different algorithm, or they don't move the same way or respond the same way. It seems horrifying if you were deeply attached.

Also:

Conversing with A.I., even about mundane, unsexual things--planning Thanksgiving, banishing ants, Kant--is fundamentally a form of role-play. On Character AI, one might chat with Spaghetti ("Buongiorno! I am an innocent plate of spaghetti!") or the R.M.S. Titanic ("Wow ice berg :P").

So is the appeal kinda like playing SIMS, except playing friends? Do people like it because it feels like playing - like D&D or video games or whatever - or because it feels like it's not playing and it genuinely relieves loneliness?

(Probably both, or somewhere in between. Plus all the sex.)

Carry on. As you were.

So do you think the SAVE act survives or the filibuster survives?