See me, feel me, hear me, love me, touch me… One of this week’s ‘AI is here to make life wonderful; resistance is useless’ stories – as opposed to the equally pervasive ‘AI is going to destroy us all; resistance is useless’ takes – was that language processing models are being touted as the answer to the problems of shy, inarticulate people on dating apps. Struggling to put yourself across in a way that gets you dates? Here is your electronic Cyrano, able to draw on the whole repertoire of human love language, and to respond almost instantaneously to an interlocutor with quips and chat-up lines! The natural response, that surely this is one of the key points where it’s most important to get a sense of the real human being behind the dating profile, their personality and manner, misses the point from the perspective of the potential user: what if I don’t have any confidence in my personality?
I’m struck by a possible analogy – because of course I am – with the use of ChatGPT in university coursework. Continue Reading »