China's Regulators Take Aim at "AI Boyfriends"

I kinda feel like if people have to turn to AI for companionship, it's the same as using AI for therapy - because the real thing isn't available and any number of systems have failed those people along the way.

In a sense, that might be a bit telling of the modern day society: in what world is it so difficult to make meaningful connections to people, that if a real human relationship can be like 5x more meaningful (made up numbers, but surely people will agree that a real relationship can have more depth) than whatever the AI can provide, and people still choose that over the real thing? Or maybe the average person kind of sucks, or the way relationships are treated sucks, or maybe the AI is like crack for impressionable brains, or people don't want a real relationship and just want some sycophantic whatever, I don't know.

Maybe it's a numbers game and some people will never find that for real (gender skew, demographics etc.), maybe it's a failing at those people not being properly socialized, maybe they themselves have something that society doesn't value ("Be yourself! No, not like that."), or just aren't pleasant for any number of reasons, don't have a third place to go for, don't have money to go and partake in social activities, have been brainwashed by hateful social media propaganda or any other mix of circumstances.

Feels like it's probably easier to ban AI and pretend all of the other issues don't exist, rather than addressing them.

We need more meat for the meat grinder. You will reproduce.

Yes, Gov's require populations to have "real" offspring. Authoritarian or not, this makes sense. IMO its only a matter of time before some version of this hits the US; if it has not already.

I legit thought the title was a linguistic euphemism targeted at dario and sama.

A friend is in China right now.

I spent some time on the phone with him the other day, as he wandered around the city where he's working.

It was Sunday there, most people's day off, and he was amazed at how many people were out in the public parks, playing chess and go, kids on the playground equipment. inter-generational interaction.

His impression was that China has a much higher level of people randomly interacting with other's IRL than here in the US.

I wonder how this would effect products like Love and Deepspace. That gacha game is HUGE.

Is this "pacing the frontier"?

[flagged]

I hope the rest of the world follows suit. Can you imagine the human misery venture capital could inflict by pursuing this vertical?

The CCP trying to get fertility rates up by cracking down on lesbians, paying money for children and now cracking down on whatever this is.

It's no use, though. You need a good economic and social outlook to get people to even consider having children. And this ain't it.