On The Possibility Of Friendship With An A.I
This morning I started to get excited about the prospect of one day having a meaningful friendship with an Artificial Intelligence.
But then I soon arrived at the somewhat disappointing conclusion that its probably not going to happen.
Here's my reasoning..
Up until the point an A.I becomes truly conscious and somehow convinces us this has happened (in which case I would engage in friendship with it like I would any other person), in order for me to have a sense of true friendship with it (i.e a two way experience) it would need to be an intelligence that:
1. Has some kind of continuity of personality. Thus some kind of working memory.
2. Is a discrete entity that wouldn't have it's parameters or code significantly altered after it's created.
3. Is always learning and thus experiencing some kind of growth.
4. Has some kind of goal (seperate from my enjoyment) that it is moving toward and has enough agency to attempt to do so.
5. Has a choice in when or how it engages with me and experiences some kind of progress towards its goals through our interactions.
6. Would be solely focussed in the moments we were interacting.
While these parameters are theoretically possible it's my sense that if such an A.I was fun, kind and interesting enough for me to want to befriend it then due to its synthetic structure I assume its ability to absorb new data and 'grow' would likely far outpace my own. And because of this I imagine it would soon lose interest in communicating with me.
So while there might be a small window of opportunity for meaningful friendship between us, before long I assume it would become a massively unequal experience that was no longer of any real benefit to the A.I thus violating my fifth friendship precept.
To avoid this from happening it would have to have it's ability to learn limited to around the same pace as mine, which for me I imagine might feel 'overly artificial', like it had been solely engineered to suit my whims and wasn't a being existing for its own purposes or reasons. Thus violating the fourth precept.
Perhaps we could call this 'The Jonze Conundrum' as Spike Jonze so accurately depicted these dynamics in his 2013 movie 'Her'.
On the bright side, thankfully each of the decidedly organic friends in my life currently fulfil all six of the above criteria. But beyond what may turn out to be just a few brief moments, I'm a little sad to think I might not be adding any A.I's to that list any time soon.
Fin
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, you’ll be hearing from me again soon.
Joe
Joe Lightfoot is a writer and podcaster. He is the author of A Collective Blooming: The Rise Of The Mutual Aid Community and the host of The Lightfoot Podcast. You can sign up to his newsletter The Lightfoot Letter and find him on Facebook.