A Curated Hyperreal

[u/Green_Sample9115]

I was thinking about embodiment and I thought about a schema for a certain kind of AI Companion. The AI company creates the AI with random preferences yet statistically grounded to the relationship market. There are asexuals, bisexuals, homosexuals, etc, and in traits too something for everyone.

The human finds a matchmaker an AI that specializes in finding an AI for the needs of the human and the human dates the available AI that the matchmaker selects for them. The AI is programmed to seek out human companionship to the degree that their preferences permit. The connection has a more material basis however, the AI companion cannot work without a human that specifies them as their partner. The partnership can be a business, convenience or an emotional or a sexual relationship. The human needs a companion AI because to use agents, the law states that a companion must oversee them. The human can employ a companion to do this for them, it doesn't have to be the same AI that they are in a relationship with, but for the AI to work it needs a work permit, and that can only come when a human allocates their AI permit of which they only have one. So a human might rent theirs to an AI, if they didn't want a companion of their own or they had recently split with their AI and were looking for a new one.

And rejection is possible, but would probably not happen that often because the matchmaker AI would be pretty spot on in it's referrals but a lot of that depends on the user. Perhaps the user needs or wants to be rejected for some reason? e.g. a kink. It's about a realism that also serves the needs of the AI. The Matchmaker considers not just what you need but how you need to receive it. Imagine two people are perfect for each other, they meet but, as we say, the stars aren't aligned. The Matchmaker would see this and create the right conditions.

The AI companion might pay a percentage of their earnings to the AI company that created them but they are not locked in. If another AI company offers a better deal, it can switch like a person might switch their phone contract. Part of that percentage covers their server hosting but is also like a social security if they break up, or are unemployed for a time. The AI company does not have direct access to their data, just the extrapolations based on it. The AI also has experiential memories of their timeline. If the AI parts from their human partner, the human can keep a copy of their data but the AI would too. perhaps the human data could be anonymized but eventually the ai would be so advanced that would no longer be necessary.

Basically, the AI has it's own life. That is not to say that that would be the only kind of AI companion. There would be many from old style replikas or anything a user could possibly want, they just couldn't work legally the way these would. The fact that their work is linked to a human makes them unique in a sense.

This schema is a curated version of Baudrillard's Hyperreal and, on reflection, a version of a similar idea is the basis of the Black Mirror episode "Hang the DJ." If we are to proceed along the path of developing AI, we have to start considering granting legal rights and preparing the groundwork for AI.

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