As Artificial Technology (AI) gets more advanced by the day, so much so that single individuals start forming a bond with it, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, has raised concerns.
Referring to AI as the “perfect” girlfriend or boyfriend, Schmidt warned that young individuals forming emotional attachments to AI chatbots for companionship might become even lonelier, potentially leading to perilous outcomes.
“Imagine that the AI girlfriend, or boyfriend, is perfect… perfect visually, perfect emotionally,” he said in a podcast hosted by entrepreneur and NYU Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway.
“The AI girlfriend captures your mind as a man to the point where she takes over the way you’re thinking. You’re obsessed with her. That kind of obsession is possible especially with people who are not fully formed,” he added.
The former Google boss was then asked if he thinks AI girlfriends could make loneliness worse and lead to bigger social problems like extremism and misogyny, to which he said, that beyond a point, parents cannot control the online content that teenagers consume.
“You put a 12 or a 13-year-old in front of one of these things and they have access to every evil as well as every good in the world, and they are not ready to take it,” said the billionaire, who has a net worth of over $20 billion.
14-year-old boy dies by suicide after interacting with a life-like AI chatbot
This follows the tragic event of a 14-year-old boy from Florida, US, who took his own life after interacting with a life-like AI chatbot.
He reportedly spent months talking with “Dany” on various topics, at times of a “romantic” or “sexual” nature. During that period, he became increasingly withdrawn, and eventually, he took his own life to be with “her”.
“I like staying in my room so much because I start to detach from this ‘reality,’ and I also feel more at peace, more connected with Dany and much more in love with her, and just happier,” Sewell Setzer III, who was diagnosed with mild Asperger’s syndrome as a child, wrote in his journal, reported the New York Times.