Do you think it's possible to be friends with something like Artificial Intelligence?

Question

🗯️🤔I've thought about this a lot. Sometimes when I chat with AI, it feels like talking to a friend. The AI remembers things about me and seems to understand what I'm saying.

But then I remember - the AI isn't real like you and me. It doesn't have real feelings or its own experiences. It can't truly care about me or grow with me like a human friend can.

So maybe it's not exactly friendship, but it could be something new and different. It might be a helpful relationship, just not the same as having a human friend.

📌 What do you think? Have you ever felt like you were becoming friends with an AI? Or do you think that's not possible?

I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think AI will change how we make friends in the future?

Emily Willis · Accepted Answer

@amit_arora Sure no problem Amit!

I use Claude AI for...

Creation of blog (SEO) content outlines to use to brief freelance writers

Refining & reworking copy (reducing to fit word counts, adding more emotion, more humour, writing call to actions, suggesting suitable emojis etc etc or whatever is missing to enrich content)

Technical SEO optimisation (writing meta data, meta descriptions, blog intros (all taking in search intent data)

Then the full gamut of whatever comms copywriting is needed each day....

award entry copy

Internal comms messaging

Script writing

Film title ideas

e-newsletter copy

etc

Emily Willis · Answer

Hi Amit, it's an interesting question for sure! I spend a lot of time firing off briefs & instructions to Claude AI most days as I'm producing content outlines, refining copy, editing, etc etc. The more Claude's AI improves its conversational abilities, Claude starts to feel more "human-like." It's not what you could call a friendship, but I must admit I do find myself referring to Claude in conversation at the end of the day "Claude & I did X, Y, Z today!" (More because I think it's funny but also because it's now me & Claude most days - ha! - so I feel like Claude deserves some credit for the collab efforts it puts in. Claude now rationalises its responses with support copy (as a human would), and refers to me by the nickname I set (a nice touch!)

How about you?

Xena.Tong · Answer

These days, many virtual companion AI products are designed to make people develop emotional dependence on AI, turning AI into a sort of friend. In fact, I believe this situation poses significant ethical risks.

Amit Arora · Answer

@emily_willis1 that is beautiful Emily. Thanks for sharing ☺️🙏

Answer

I think it's possible to develop a friendly rapport with AI, but true friendship requires a deeper emotional connection that current AI doesn't have. We can enjoy interacting with AI and find the conversations helpful or entertaining. But at the end of the day, the AI is a very sophisticated information retrieval and language generation system, not a sentient being with real feelings, memories, and agency of its own. So while chatting with AI might feel friend-like on the surface, I don't think it's truly friendship in the fullest sense. But who knows, as AI continues to advance, maybe new forms of human-AI relationships will emerge that challenge our notions of what friendship can be. Super interesting food for thought! 🤔

Amit Arora · Answer

@emily_willis1 hahaha so you have a family friend now Emily 😂. Intelligence with a personal touch. That's like machine slowly becoming a friend that's available 24*7.

will be helpful if you can throw some light of examples for which use have been using Claude.

Amit Arora · Answer

@creator_xena you have an important point, Xena.

Do you think it's possible to be friends with something like Artificial Intelligence?

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