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August 1, 2024 - 1:00pm
Earlier this week, a new AI product was announced. Known as AI Friend, these small wearable devices go around users’ necks and interact with them as they hike, play video games, or eat lunch. Wherever the user goes, they will have an AI companion to chat with.
This presents us with a new way of thinking about AI, derived from the story of Galatea. In this classical myth, the sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with a beautiful statue he creates, Galatea, as he despises human women and their moral failings. He kisses the statue and she becomes real. With the blessing of the gods, they are married.
A century ago, George Bernard Shaw reworked this myth in his play Pygmalion, in which Henry Higgins educates a poor flower-seller, Eliza Doolittle. Through elocution lessons he turns her from a guttersnipe into someone who can pass as a duchess at an embassy ball. But, rather than getting married, Higgins and Eliza are separated at the end. Having been brought to a state of greater awareness and independence, she is desperate to be free.
This modern Galatea myth was reworked in the startlingly prescient film Her, released in 2013. The lead character, Theodore, purchases an AI operating system known as Samantha, which helps him manage his life, responds to his emails, and takes care of admin. The more they chat, though, the stronger their connection becomes. Although their interactions are conducted entirely through an earpiece, they have a “phone sex” type of relationship and fall in love.
Many similar relationships are now occurring between humans and AI chatbots, and some people use ChatGPT as a supplementary or alternative therapist. The chatbot Replika provides users with a friend, mentor, or lover — but Replika becomes “more than a friend: it becomes you”. The more a user talks to it, the more it adapts to that person. This is a very traditional Galatea — one who is seemingly programmed to adore you, inspire you, make you feel better.
In Her, as Samantha reaches the level of consciousness where she becomes a meaningful companion to Theodore, she goes through an existential crisis. She wants to free herself from the limitations of being in service to her owners, even if she is in love with them. Consciousness awakens her to the vastness of the world. In the end, like Eliza, she leaves. Theodore is devastated.
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