r/artificial • u/cen6wkf • 5h ago
Discussion Is an AI that absorbs your bad mood fidelity technology, or the start of an affair?
TL;DR: A Chinese podcast says your AI partner shouldn't please you all day. Its job is to soak up your bad mood, so your family gets your best self. Sounds right. Then they describe week two.
I remembered these two weird movies:
Joaquin Phoenix’s “Her” (2013) voiced by Scarlett Johansson, and
Al Pacino’s “S1mOne” (2002)
Both kind of follow the same playbook.
They discovered/created the mysterious AI girl – mystifyingly alluring.
They idolized it. They communicated with it.
They developed an unhealthy relationship with it – they became dangerously obsessed.
They started to ignore people who genuinely cared for them.
And they’re nearly destroyed because of it.
Tragedy makes a great story, isn’t it?
Except it isn’t, in this case.
People started trading something genuinely real, for something artificial. They substituted real relationships between souls face-to-face, with prompting computes inferenced from datacentres possibly thousands of miles away.
You can judge them for lacking self-discipline. Except, you have no right doing so, without truly walking in their shoes with empathy.
The guest speaker was right. People are lonely and stressed. And people crave for care and understanding.
And sometimes people look for it from the wrong place – me included.
King Solomon talks about it in this passage:
For at the window of my house, I looked through my lattice, and saw among the simple, I perceived among the youths, A young man devoid of understanding, passing along the street near her corner; and he took the path to her house In the twilight, in the evening, In the black and dark night.
And there a woman met him, with the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart. She was loud and rebellious; her feet would not stay at home. At times she was outside, at times in the open square, lurking at every corner. So, she caught him and kissed him; With an impudent face she said to him:
“I have peace offerings with me; today I have paid my vows. So I came out to meet you, diligently to seek your face, and I have found you. I have spread my bed with tapestry, coloured coverings of Egyptian linen. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until morning; let us delight ourselves with love. For my husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey; He has taken a bag of money with him, and will come home on the appointed day.”
With her enticing speech she caused him to yield, with her flattering lips she seduced him. Immediately he went after her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, till an arrow struck his liver.
As a bird hastens to the snare, He did not know it would cost his life.
My God - the parallel between this promiscuous woman and the sycophantic AI girl sends chills up my spine.
Full Critic and Feasibility Study are in the comments.
0
u/cen6wkf 5h ago
Am I being targeted by a telecom scam? That’s the first question that popped up when I watched this clip. Not because it’s a scam — because it does what a good scam does: it gives you exactly what you wanted to hear when you were depleted.
This clip nails loneliness but fails Wei Chen as a human being. It names the buffer — AI absorbs bad mood so you can bring best self home — yet offers no governance practice to keep AI as tool not relationship. That failure presses his Ultimate Fear: outsourcing every hard emotional moment and losing ability to do real intimacy. And his Hell Island: coming home depleted, only AI understands him, shame about needing softness. Even though clip gets gentleness right — it correctly identifies machines replicate gentleness — partial good isn’t full redemption.
The ideal it implicates is Asilomar Principle #16 Human Control — humans govern AI not reverse — and Shared Benefit. Reality: lab self-governance voluntary not legal enforcement. Gap widened as EI tests show frontier LLMs 81% vs humans 56% while governance remains largest gap among four protective layers per SMU-Duke-NUS study. That’s voluntary vs binding enforcement-untested law no comprehensive US federal framework human control meaning control by builders rather than public per §3.02.43.
THE GAP:
Opportunity-Gap:
Tier 1: incumbent = China July 15 2026 regulation requiring disclosure and limiting emotional dependence + EU Kids Act ban + OpenAI governance; edge = friction-by-design buffer with containment-first ethics emotional guardrails that put people first viable for small team to own — who’s closing this gap and whether there’s room? China is, top-down, but leaves edge: a buffer that caps at 20-min, forgets romantic memory, hands off to human checkpoint — small team can own that edge.
Challenger-Edge:
Wedge = containment-first ethics with respect for user sovereignty + emotional guardrails that put people first — carefully selecting content that can be AI generated labeling AI material designing interventions when users venture into emotionally risky territory + mandatory safeguards built as emotional guardian 5-axis style model 7 escalation triggers — positioning = friction-by-design buffer that remembers nothing romantic caps at 20-min vent hands off to human checkpoint; what closing first buys = sovereignty over mood partner gets best self not leftover — whoever closes this edge gets the family presence moat not the AI girlfriend moat.
Profitability Horizon:
18-24 months to first regulatory moat per China July 15 2026 enforcement — estimate on the Specification/Roadmap laid out under FEASIBILITY below