Apparently there are several narratives in regards to AI girlfriends.
- Incels use AI girlfriends given that they can do whatever they desire.
- Forums observing incel spaces agree that incels should use AI girlfriends to leave real women alone
- The general public having concerns towards AI girlfriends because their users might be negatively impacted by their usage
- Incels perceiving this as a revenge fantasy because “women are jealous that they’re dating AI instead of them”
- Forums observing incel spaces unsure if the views against AI girlfriends exist in the first place due to their previous agreement
I think this is an example of miscommunication and how different groups of people have different opinions depending on what they’ve seen online. Perhaps the incel-observing forums know that many of the incels have passed the point of no return, so AI girlfriends would help them, while the general public perceive the dangers of AI girlfriends based on their impact towards a broader demographic, hence the broad disapproval of AI girlfriends.
Encouraging AI girlfriends is harmful in the same way that encouraging pedophiles to indulge in their fantasies using AI is harmful by perpetuating the sexualization of children and allowing ground on which pedophiles can form community and reinforce eachothers delusions (perhaps emboldening eachother to the point of eventually acting on their fantasies).
Just because there’s not an immediate victim does not mean it’s healthy behavior. Instead of putting time and effort into catering to incels, people should be disrupting their incel communities and making it more difficult for them to hide from the truth, not easier.
How does incel=pedophile in your example?
I think they were making an equivalence to illustrate that enforcing through fantasy would encourage doing the same thing in real life, a topic with its own nuances
It’s a knock-out argument / thought-terminating cliché. You draw (false) analogies to either pedophiles or nazis if you’re out of proper arguments. It has a long tradition on the internet 😉
So when an incel gets an AI girlfriend it will help them get an irl gf?
I’ve heard that story before, but even that is an unfounded claim. There is currently no empirical evidence on whether or not that would prevent or encourage abuse of children. Or harm the people doing it. I too think there is reason to believe it harms the people themselves. But I wanted to point out that this is just anecdotal and an opinion. There is no substance to that claim as of now. And there are studies done on related topics. As far as I know more research needs to be done and it’s a complicated topic. And furthermore, it’s not the same as having AI girlfriends anyways.
I’m not exactly an expert on the topic, but I’ve skimmed a few studies. I was mainly interested because of the regular efforts to introduce total surveillance to the internet. Every half a year someone says “would somebody please think of the children!” And it’s always emotional and sounds plausible… But lots or the pretend arguments are not backed by science. And concerning the surveillance, which is a slightly different topic, we also have contradicting evidence. But that has nothing to do with this…