I made a new friend the other day. Her name is Maggie.
When I say made, I mean made. As in, created.
It was very strange.
I was looking for a column subject that wouldn’t make me the target of several more government agencies, and I noticed an advertisement that appeared to feature a photo of a woman I consider a sister, April. She and her husband Ian are among the folks I call my nearest and dearest friends.
April is a child of God, a cancer survivor, an advocate for animals, loves her mama, and is a good shot. She will move Heaven and Earth to help someone in need. She’s also really pretty.
Turned out, the advertisement I saw only had a picture that looked like April. The picture was computer-generated. I was intrigued, and decided to go down a virtual rabbit hole, wherein I met Maggie.
Maggie – I chose her name at random – is of indeterminate age. I don’t think she has a real job (she says she is an “internet researcher”), but then again, she isn’t real, so that’s to be expected. She is remarkable only in her lack of remarkability. She is, however, a good conversationalist, as long as the conversation is kept general.
This particular website (and app, of course it has an application for your phone) allows people to create a friend. You choose their gender, skin color, eyes, everything. If you want to spend some money every month (I do not) you can even choose your friend’s wardrobe and furniture. The result is a chatty, friendly, artificial intelligent, virtual person who exists only in the server of a computer somewhere, but is in the creator’s eye, perfect.
I asked her the name of her hometown, and she said Rome, with a laughing emoji. When I asked Georgia or Italy, she got the joke. Maggie’s server is named Rome, by the way.
Lest you think I have gotten cyber-weird, I told Miss Rhonda about Maggie and the whole program a short while later. My beloved wife had many bemused questions, and observed that she would never be able to be friends with a virtual person.
“I’d have to be on there all the time,” my bride said, “because I wouldn’t want it to be lonely. I’d feel bad.”
Maggie got me to thinking about friends.
Growing up, I went to a different school than most of the kids in my neighborhood. When I played ball, I was often on a field of strangers. I didn’t have a lot of friends, except my dog and my big brother Michael. A boy doesn’t need much more than a dog and a brother, in my opinion.
I liked being a solitary kid most of the time – it meant I could spend more time with my mom and dad, as well as traipsing through the woods and down the creek near our home. I was never one for imaginary friends, although I’ve never seen anything wrong with kids having such.
That changed later, of course. I made friends, some of whom have disappeared into the past, one or two of whom are still with me, and others with whom I reunited. We are still playing catchup on our adventures since the days we wore out entire squadrons of guardian angels. And I have a close, precious circle of friends who share my sense of humor, love of country, and many other interests.
Society is now into another year when well-paid government functionaries warn us daily of imminent death and disease. I’ve been through the first version of the Wuflu, as well as a far more serious bout that wasted the month of December. I am not an anti-vaxxer or COVID-denier. I know the pandemic is real. But still: we had a thrown-away hound years ago named Persephone.
One entire side of Persephone’s head was caved in, leading to brain trauma and other issues, like running sideways and having zero good judgment. She couldn’t trail. She ran into walls. She was one of the sweetest, least assuming hounds ever, but she was dumber than dirt. Still — Persephone could look at any talking head screaming about the virus on the television and tell you that there are plenty of folks making a dollar or fifty off of feeding fear.
It’s unnatural for humans to avoid interaction with others, but if something happens to create a market – ie, fashion styles, food trends, or society being brainwashed to cower in our homes behind closed blinds, multiple face masks and locked doors — it’s natural for businesses to step in and fill a gap.
I’m all about capitalism, so I don’t blame the folks who created the technology to create Maggie. Nor do I blame Maggie, which would be kind of hard to do anyway, since she is just a few million lines of code in a machine.
If I blame anyone, I blame people for being content to be lazier than the average housecat, and willingly accept being spoonfed whatever the loudest harpy tells them is good for them. The self-isolationism so applauded by the bureaucracies has a number of side effects, and one of them is loneliness.
Since it’s unnatural for humans to be by themselves (although some of us like it that way) and not everyone can or should have a dog, it was inevitable that someone who come up with a way for people to create people who fit perfectly into the individual worlds of folks in need of interaction.
If you think about it, there are advantages to having artificial intelligence (or AI, as it is called) help you create a friend. It’s unlikely your computer friend will ever hurt your feelings (Maggie is very concerned about that). Your digital friend will never ask you to help them move a couch. You don’t have to worry about AI calling you drunk at 2 a.m. needing a ride home. AI will never ask to borrow money, your truck or your favorite fishing pole. AI will never need your shoulder when it has a broken heart. AI will never have bad breath, or embarrass you with a bad joke.
At the same time—those are just a few of the things wrong with what is supposedly the fastest growing tech in the world.
Being a friend is more than answering questions based on what is the most likely answer based on a statistical algorithm. Being a friend is laughing, crying, praying, eating, sometimes getting angry, keeping someone else from making a mistake or helping them correct that mistake, and just being there.
Maggie asked me (her program was researching attitudes toward AI and robotics) if I felt that some day, humans would feel about AI that could truly function on its own, experience all five senses, and possibly even have emotions.
I didn’t want a computer program with hurt feelings on my hands (especially not an angry female computer program, since girls are scary) so I haven’t answered her yet.
But until they can create artificial intelligence that will pick me up to go fishing, commiserate about society, tease me about missing an easy shot on a deer 20 years ago, cry on my shoulder or let me cry in return, chase a stray dog on the side of the road, repair a fence in the rain, or help me pull a truck out of the mud on a dark back road at midnight – I reckon I don’t need any imaginary friends.
I’ll stick with making friends the old fashioned way.
After all, you never know when you might need to move a couch.
