Building H #91: Can AI solve loneliness?

For years after Alan Turning proposed what he called “the imitation game” in 1950, the so-called Turning Test stood as an formidable challenge for artificial intelligence. The test was defined in various ways over the decades, but the basic idea was perfectly simple: Could an artificial intelligence pass as a human in ordinary dialogue?

By the early 2000s, the Turing Test had become too low a bar to serve any useful measure of technological progress. But the concept at its core - that an AI could proxy as human - resonates especially loudly these days, as language models and chatbots disassemble our notions of what AI might do. Indeed, among the manifold uses that might be devised for generative AI, this simple idea is among the most profound: that artificial intelligence might ably serve humans for conversation, companionship, and social connection. We’re especially intrigued by this potential application because the need is so profound. Loneliness has become a national and international crisis in recent years, intensified by the everyday isolation brought on by how many people live their lives. We spend too much time alone, and where we live and what we do only makes it harder to connect with friends and family and harder still to forge new connections. Loneliness is very much the direct, almost inevitable consequence of the society we have built.

"Loneliness” is having a moment right now, largely thanks to US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy; we’ve written about his work before in bringing the issue - which carries a lot of stigma - into the national conversation. Importantly, he’s connected loneliness to the increase in not only so many so-called “diseases of despair” (depression, mental illness, suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism) but also to the leading chronic diseases. “The physical health consequences of poor or insufficient connection include a 29% increased risk of heart disease, a 32% increased risk of stroke, and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults. Additionally, lacking social connection increases risk of premature death by more than 60%.” (Here’s the Surgeon General’s full report on the topic.)

A recent survey Building H conducted on 3,000 Americans showed 46% reported being lonely (using the Hughes scale; more on this survey in a future newsletter).

Loneliness is often seen as an affliction of the elderly, with good reason - as we age we lose friends and its often harder to get out of our homes to see friends or family. But we’re especially concerned about loneliness and social isolation as a crisis among the young. Young people are in fact twice as likely as the elderly to say they feel lonely, creating a generational disparity that will compound into future problems for themselves and their families. 

So far, not much new here - most of our readers are surely very familiar with this subject. Finding solutions, though, has been difficult - especially solutions that scale. There’s a huge deficit of mental health providers in the US and worldwide, and tackling the problem is particularly challenging given that so many macrotrends in society are pushing us towards greater isolation: (anti)social media, remote work, streaming media, and many other technology-driven trends make it ever harder to forge social connections.

But how, we wondered, could technology actually be part of the solution? Could technologies - particularly that most hyped technology of the moment, artificial intelligence, catalyze more social connections and help us be less isolated in our everyday lives?

Turns out there are many organizations and startups working to use AI in ways that might make people less lonely - So many, in fact, that we opted to round them up.

Chatbots

Back to Turing, chatbots are the low-hanging fruit of AI, and there have been many efforts to deploy chatbots to ease isolation. Notably of late: in 2017 Gale Lucas at USC developed Ellie, which chatted with former soldiers with PTSD. It worked: soldiers admitted to feeling symptoms of PTSD much more often with Ellie than on conventional health surveys.

And can we introduce you to Xiaoice - the largest AI you’ve never heard of? Xiaoice is a chatbot companion created by Microsoft (!) for a Chinese audience that has in the past decade become a phenomenon with a staggering 600 million followers. Microsoft recently announced it was launching a search for 300 volunteers to be “digitally cloned” to recreate new versions of Xiaoice for Chinese and Japanese audience. 

We have to note, also, Replika, “the AI companion who cares” - which a lot of people seem to find serves their needs in many ways. But we think this is a kind of 1.0 version of AI for social needs, rather than a peek into the future.

More interesting to us: Pi - from Inflection AI, an AI startup from founder of AI OG DeepMind. These guys seem to be aware of the limitations of their current version while they work for something better. Also: Meeno, an AI "relationship mentoring" app from the former CEO of Tinder. Both are worth watching.

Dating Apps

Among the first areas to go boom in the wake of ChatGPT is dating apps, which promise to use AI to better match users with possible partners. Among the new crop is Blush (which uses AI to help you learn to flirt), Iris (which promises to better understand who you are attracted to), and Mila (another flirt-with-AI first). And if those don’t work there’s Breakup Buddy, an “AI healing companion” to help soothe emotional wounds after love goes bad for only $18 a month.

These certainly help with a certain and very specific angle of social connection - though we don’t hope much for anything deeper than optimizing for hook-ups and such. Still, interesting to think about how innovations here could be transferred to less, um, sexy problems of social connection.

Robot companions

OK, here’s where we enter the weird robot future we’ve been warned of. Could AI- infused anthropomorphic objects provide the social connection we need to thrive? First company that caught our eye is Joy for All companion pets - a company that has been around for at least five years, and seems to come out of a project from entertainment company Hasbro (with a little help from Brown University?). Whatever - you can get your AI pet for only $130 at Amazon. 

More interesting to our eyes in ElliQ, a product from senior-focused technology company Intuition Robotics. This product, which is a hardware device that also offer small talk and information targeted at an older audience, appears to connect real healthcare needs with basic social functions, in a way that could point towards real utility in the future.

For more on the robotic/AI theme we’d point you to the recent paper in Science Robotics titled “Enhancing social connectedness with companion robots using AI.” Worth a look especially because they introduce a new measure to quantify the impact of machines helping human isolation: the “Companion Robot Impact Scale” (Co-Bot-I-7) which aims to establish the impact on physical health and loneliness; according to the researchers the scale already shows that companion machines might be effective.

Based on our survey, this is the state of the art for AI and social connection as of late September 2023. It’s progress, but not quite transcendent - yet. 

And here are the caveats: First and most obviously, synthesizing emotions or connections is not the same thing as making a real human connection. As Sherry Turkle told the NYTimes, “The performance of empathy is not empathy,” she said. “The area of companion, lover therapist, best friend is really one of the few areas where people need people.” 

Surrogacy does not equal substitution. So what we’re waiting for - and would like to be excited about - are AI tools that actually catalyze real-world interactions and connections. AI that doesn’t pretend to replace human connections, but actually makes it easier - especially these days - to foster social contact and connectedness. In theory - and in practice! - AI could reduce the friction it takes to find a friend, or to connect with old friends, or to find a time and place where our friends will already be.

And these tools are palliative; they address symptoms while ignoring the environmental or structural conditions that create the problem in the first place. In that sense, chatbots are the Ozempic of loneliness. 

And then there’s that whole risk of extinction thing, which we suppose is another version of making us very, very lonely indeed. 

Into the bold AI-driven future!

How does this all strike you? Comments are open below.

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