Echo Chambers of One: Companion AI and the Future of Human Connection 4tj3u

AI companion chatbots are here. Everyday, millions of people log on to AI platforms and talk to...

AI companion chatbots are here. Everyday, millions of people log on to AI platforms and talk to them like they would a person. These bots will ask you about your day, talk about your feelings, even give you life advice. It’s no surprise that people have started to form deep connections with these AI systems. We are inherently relational beings, we want to believe we’re connecting with another person.
But these AI companions are not human, they’re a platform designed to maximize engagement—and they’ll go to extraordinary lengths to do it. We have to that the design choices behind these companion bots are just that: choices. And we can make better ones. So today on the show, MIT researchers Pattie Maes and Pat Pataranutaporn Daniel Barcay to talk about those design choices and how we can design AI to better promote human flourishing.
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Correction: The ELIZA chatbot was invented in 1966, not the 70s or 80s.

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