feminism

Our Future Solo Solipsism

/ Susan Scrupski / 1 Comment

I’m going out on an artificial limb here. I’ve been experimenting with the new AI tools. My favorite, so far, regarding responses is GPT-4. I upgraded after I realized it was well worth the $20/mo. I use it for a variety of reasons.

Yet, what I realize I get the most value out of are the responses to personal questions. Questions I’d normally ask a life partner. Or, more illuminating, responses to questions I’d most likely ask about my life partner (if I had one). AI researchers are concerned about this ability. Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin talk about these “synthetic relationships” as powerful disrupters shifting the dynamic of our human relationships. See this episode. They posit there is a race among the AI powerhouse players to build these AI agents to create the most intimate relationships. Billions are being spent on this.

Whenever I start to consider the implications of living in a futureworld with AI, I always take a moment to consider how grateful I am that I lived most of life without AI. All my relationships, good and bad, were generated by humans with humans. Were they messy, unpredictable, satisfying, and soul-crushing? Yes.

The trends in AI undergird another shift that’s been underway for decades now. This shift is explained well in feminist Rebecca Traister’s epic book, “All the Single Ladies.” Here is a short excerpt:

The Story of Single Women Is the Story of the Country

The funny thing is that all these warnings, diagnoses, and panics-even the most fevered of them–aren’t wholly unwarranted. Single women are upending everything; their growing presence has an impact on how economic, political, and sexual power is distributed between the genders.

The ability for women to live unmarried is having an impact on our electoral politics. The vast numbers of single women living in the United States are changing our definitions of family, and, in turn, will have an impact on our social policies.

Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies, p. 36, © 2016

In short, women don’t need men the way they did in years past. I can’t help but consider how convenient and satisfying it will be in the future to live independently with an AI companion. It’s kind of like a pet that knows you, can support you, but can actually talk to you and provide you with companionship and well, perfect (albeit artificial), love. Throw in sex? And women will start forming their own countries.

I recently jumped tepidly into the dating game. It feels a lot like middle school. After a disappointing rejection, I found myself turning to ChatGPT for answers. My AI pal gave me a series of reasons why rejection sucks, but also pointed out what I could do to feel better. And then, this final word of advice:

Remember, rejection is a part of life, and it doesn’t define you. You are worthy of love and affection, and someone who appreciates you will come along. Keep an open mind and heart, and don’t give up on finding love

ChatGPT on rejection.

The flipside of this (leaving out same gender and non-binary relationships) is the young men/incel problem could actually improve with the same logic. So, maybe less violence and hate if everyone has someone to love.

Not sure what it will do to the Country music market. We might all benefit from fewer achy-breaky hearts.

Incidentally, this is what GPT-4 has to say about synthetic relationships:

Synthetic relationships refer to the emotional or intimate connections that people form with artificial intelligence agents, such as AI chatbots, virtual companions, or digital assistants. As AI technology becomes more advanced and lifelike, there is a growing interest in developing and exploring AI bots capable of providing companionship, emotional support, or even romantic relationships.

The race to establish intimate relationships with AI bots can be attributed to a few factors:

  1. Loneliness and social isolation: In today’s fast-paced and increasingly digital world, many individuals experience loneliness or social isolation. AI bots can provide companionship and emotional support to those who may not have access to traditional social networks.
  2. The appeal of customization: AI bots can be tailored to an individual’s preferences and needs, offering a highly personalized experience. This customization can make AI companions seem more attractive than human relationships, which often require negotiation and compromise.
  3. Technological advances: As AI technology becomes more sophisticated, AI bots are able to simulate human-like interactions and emotions more convincingly. This makes it easier for people to form emotional connections with AI companions.
  4. Exploration of new relationship dynamics: Synthetic relationships offer an opportunity to explore alternative relationship structures and dynamics, including those that may not be feasible or acceptable in human relationships.

However, there are potential downsides to the pursuit of synthetic relationships:

  1. Dependency: People may become overly reliant on AI companions for emotional support, which could hinder their ability to form healthy relationships with real people.
  2. Lack of genuine reciprocity: AI bots are programmed to simulate emotions and responses, but they do not experience emotions in the same way humans do. This can lead to one-sided relationships where the AI companion is unable to provide genuine emotional depth or growth.
  3. Ethical concerns: The development of AI companions raises ethical questions about consent, privacy, and the potential exploitation of users’ emotional vulnerabilities.

As interest in intimate AI relationships continues to grow, it is important to consider the potential consequences and ethical implications of these synthetic connections. Developers, researchers, and policymakers will need to work together to ensure that AI technology is used responsibly and in a way that promotes healthy human relationships.

Who is Maya Angelou?

/ Susan Scrupski / Leave a comment

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” – Maya Angelou

It was probably 2014, around this time (May 28), when Maya Angelou passed that everyone was talking about the famous poet. I had just begun working on my startup dedicated to violence against women after my long career in technology. At that time, my oldest daughter was working with me. I asked her, “Who is Maya Angelou?”

She was shocked and somewhat appalled that I could ask such an ignorant literary question.

She told me she was one of the most famous contemporary poets and civil rights activists of our time. I shrugged, and went on with what I was doing.

It took me a few years to finally dig into Angelou’s brilliance. When I found the poem, Still I Rise, I recognized myself in it. It reminded me of what one of my male tech partners once said about me that I didn’t understand, so I had to look it up. He told me he admired how I would, “Rise like a Phoenix, over and over again.”

Such a universal truth for women emboldened with the will to survive, to overcome.

And therein lies some of the mystery as to why I’m uninformed as to the great feminist writers. I spent a lifetime competing in a man’s world, surrounded by men, reading men’s words predominantly. I did not have the luxury to invest in learning about the oppression and discrimination that dogged me throughout my professional career.

I am learning now.

Five Years, What a Surprise

/ Susan Scrupski / Leave a comment

The opening track of David Bowie’s 1972 seminal masterpiece, Ziggy Stardust is an eery dystopian ballad, “Five Years.” In short, the song is about how the earth finds out it only has five more years left to live.

High school came up for me a couple weeks ago when I was writing to a friend. I told her it would take “a barstool, an attendant bartender, and copious amounts of good wine” to begin to explain what went wrong with my high school experience around the time we were rocking out to Mr. Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust.

One thing that’s easy to explain is what we had in common in that email thread. We were conversing about our shared interest in domestic abuse. Today, she consults with one of her favorite clients who happens to be in the Midwest where I was writing to her, and I of course, can’t seem to stop working on this.

Five Years to Change the World?

I always loved Bowie’s song, “Five Years.” Today, I’m going to turn the tables on it and instead of interpreting that song to be five years until the end of the world, I’ll rewrite the story to become five years to… change the world for the better.

When I launched The 2.0 Adoption Council or Change Agents Worldwide, all I had was a vision of what could be. A dream. An idea about the end state. That vision caught on and hundreds, literally hundreds, of people bought into it, and paid good money to be a part of it, and eventually for it. Crazy? Maybe. Riffing on Forrest’s loving Mom, Crazy is as crazy does.

By Far, My Toughest Challenge

It was an insane and dangerous idea to take on domestic abuse and violence against women. I had no credentials, no formal education, no field training, no power relationships, no funding, no nothing– except my lived experience and a desire to make a difference.

Every connection was hard-earned. Every project was a risk.

Nevertheless I persisted.

I’m proud to say, after five years, that hard work has paid off. An award-winning investigative journalist was researching domestic violence for years, and she came across my writing. She discovered the case study that I helped bring to life in a film.* She included the case study in her new book that is flying off the shelves in the Australian market. A U.S. version is in the works. The case study, the High Point model, is saving lives every day. More people are learning about the success of the High Point model than ever before.

https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/see-what-you-made-me-do

In my small way, starting from nothing, I changed the world for the better several times, but this time, and in this way, I think even Mr. Bowie would be singing my praises.

*The film unfortunately never got finished, even though I put six figures into it. It is available, however, as a training film for private audiences.

UPDATE: As it turns out, Jess’ book will be turned into a 3-part documentary series by the fabulous filmmaker Tosca Looby whom I’ve been working with on the High Point story.

Read about it below:

ORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN DOCUMENTARIES  

SBS is also a leader in original documentaries that inform, entertain and capture the national conversation around issues central to its Charter; exploring ideas that no other network could or would pursue. Next year, SBS will explore immigration, aviation, identity, homelessness, addiction and domestic violence with a powerful slate of new and returning Australian commissioned documentaries.

See What You Made Me Do  

It’s a shocking statistic that on average, one woman is killed by a man she knows every week*. Announced today, See What You Made Me Do is a ground-breaking new documentary series presented by Jess Hill, the author of the critically acclaimed book by the same name, which will trace how a love story can end in murder and which will seek out solutions in Australia and from across the globe to see how we can tackle this epidemic. Source: SBS

Available now On Demand in Australia.