Hey folks, we’re back with another weird one. Years ago, Noah, Devan, and I debated whether having sex with a robot should be considered cheating. I don’t know how it came up, but the debate eventually captured the attention of all of our friends. At bars, parks, and dinners, we all shouted and pontificated. At the time, the NST hosts landed on a “it depends,” based on how advanced and human-like the robot was, and how much time the potential cheater was spending with the bot. At the time, this was a far-fetched thought experiment. But now, technology is starting to catch up to the premise.
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According to a study out of BYU, nearly 20% of US adults say they are romancing AI characters online. That includes anything from innocuous dates to full on “sex” or sexting. Many of these people are already in IRL relationships, so we felt it was time to bring the question back, albeit with slightly different framing. If you’re in a relationship, and you’re also dating an AI character, should it be considered cheating?
In this episode, we talk to a few different people. First is Tatum Hunter, a tech reporter at The Washington Post, and a friend of the pod, as they say. She’s been writing about this phenomenon for some time now. Then, we spoke to a woman who is actually romancing AI characters. Finally, we spoke to the Instagram famous “Therapy Jeff,” to get his take.
But we couldn’t wrap things without doing an experiment of our own…I’m a big, “don’t knock it until you try it” guy, so in this episode, you will hear tape of Devan and I going on dates with AI chatbots.
After you’ve listened to the episode, check out some bonus stuff below.
First, I’d be remiss not to show you guys my AI character creation on Replika. Here she is in all of her glory, along with a screenshot of part of our conversation.
And below is a sample of Devan’s more bombastic conversation with his chatbot. As he mentions in the episode, using the free version of Replika means that you don’t get to see the spiciest of your character’s texts.
If you’d like to read about Tatum’s experience with the Tinder AI dating game, you can find that here.
Finally, RE: last week's episode that peeked inside of the violent world of online pedophile hunters, one listener, Eric from Canada, shared this article about a hunter who was recently acquitted of a rare intimidation charge after blurting out the name of a prosecutor’s child. And Laura from upstate NY sent in this article about a retired cop accused of murdering his roommate who he may have alleged was a pedophile.
That’s all for this week! Let us know what you think of the episode, and as always, if you like what you’re listening to, leave us a 5-star review.
I feel bad for people who use these seriously because there is a nonzero chance all this data will be leaked eventually. Ashley Madison 2.0.