Do social connections include machines?

We are in an epic era of depression and loneliness and the technology world is always there to pick up on an opportunity. But is this the solution we want?

Well, whether we want it or not, people in the AI world are finding ways to take advantage of the commercial opportunities to exploit people’s loneliness.

For example, there are several versions of the hug a bot. You can get anything from a virtual hug to a ‘real’ hug from your favorite machine that adjusts itself to fit you perfectly?

But if you need more than a hug, and you need a best friend to talk to, well there are several contenders coming to the forefront. These Artificial intelligence machines want to be your best friend.  Well actually, Google and Facebook want them to be your best friend.

Of course, sometimes we just need a helping hand. If we are unwell, maybe we need someone to bring us food, medicine or wipe our bottom. Well there is a bot for that. Or maybe we need someone to babysit our children. For only $350.00 US, you can have your very own machine that looks after your dearest ones while you do the really important things. Really!!!???

And of course, when you need that extra bit of love, there are the sex bots.

Is this what we want our social interactions to be? Or do we want real people to care about us, play with us, talk with us, and love us. It is a basic human need to have strong, real and trusting relationships with real people. We need them and we need the people who live near us to have them as well.

These kind of relationships come from our communities we live in. Our best friend, people who will care and trust us enough to give a hug, people we can sit down with and have both fun and serious conversations with.

But wanting something is different than having something. To have these kinds of relationships, we need to create the environment for them. They don’t happen by accident; they happen when the community decides they are important – and then does something about it.

The choice we have in front of us, take the relationships that Google and Facebook will offer us. Or make sure our community has the cultural depth that means we and our fellow citizens can have real, meaningful  human social connectedness.

Explore how the Happy Community Project can help your community be a community with strong social connectedness with real people.