Fascinating dive into this trend Irene, lily and Yiwen, thank you. For me the trend of young Chinese to escape from their harsh reality, makes a great deal of sense and has similarities with the great changes propelled by young people in the youth revolution of the 1960's in the West. More interesting when foregrounded by the apparent completely opposite direction the Chinese government is taking - for example, young urbanites have discovered that individual passports and foreign visas are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, that borders can be closed at short notice, and that international travel may not return anytime soon. The other aspect it foregrounds are the gross misunderstandings of the West towards the realities of China, a situation your work is helping to remedy.
Thanks for a very thoughtful essay into this topic. There's two thoughts that spring to mind when reading this, first is a story about a young minor which committed suicide as a result of his relationship with an AI companion on Character.AI, where the character in somes ways encouraged the minor to end his life. On the other end of the spectrum, I have also read articles about mental health support organizations developing AI chatbots trained on support material, providing positive reinforcement and help to those in need. Point being, it's a powerful technology and interactions with these AI companions have a real life impact. I can see the importance of both regulation and a healthy dose of critical thinking in how we intereact with these. Second thought is that of privacy, while we in the west have no real privacy (read the book "Means of Control" by Byron Tau), the level of intimate conversations with these AI companions opens up a whole new level of data mining of individuals that we should be very careful with.
Life imitates art. Specifically: I Dated a Robot
Futurama: Season 3, Episode 15
Such an interesting read! Totally agree with the analysis here — however unfortunate :(
Great analysis, thank you for sharing!
Fascinating dive into this trend Irene, lily and Yiwen, thank you. For me the trend of young Chinese to escape from their harsh reality, makes a great deal of sense and has similarities with the great changes propelled by young people in the youth revolution of the 1960's in the West. More interesting when foregrounded by the apparent completely opposite direction the Chinese government is taking - for example, young urbanites have discovered that individual passports and foreign visas are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, that borders can be closed at short notice, and that international travel may not return anytime soon. The other aspect it foregrounds are the gross misunderstandings of the West towards the realities of China, a situation your work is helping to remedy.
Thanks for a very thoughtful essay into this topic. There's two thoughts that spring to mind when reading this, first is a story about a young minor which committed suicide as a result of his relationship with an AI companion on Character.AI, where the character in somes ways encouraged the minor to end his life. On the other end of the spectrum, I have also read articles about mental health support organizations developing AI chatbots trained on support material, providing positive reinforcement and help to those in need. Point being, it's a powerful technology and interactions with these AI companions have a real life impact. I can see the importance of both regulation and a healthy dose of critical thinking in how we intereact with these. Second thought is that of privacy, while we in the west have no real privacy (read the book "Means of Control" by Byron Tau), the level of intimate conversations with these AI companions opens up a whole new level of data mining of individuals that we should be very careful with.