Sorry, No, AI Girlfriends Are Not Destroying The Birthrate Or Killing Medicare & Social Security

Overhype

from the that’s-not-how-any-of-this-works dept

What is it with real life stories matching satirical online TV shows lately? We just had a story match one from The Office, and now we’ve got one (that’s much dumber) that is copied from a Futurama episode about how dating robots will lead to the downfall of civilization:

Recently, the Hill published a truly bizarre article that seems like it took that Futurama joke as real, claiming that “AI girlfriends are ruining an entire generation of men” by someone named Liberty Vittert. The headline is terrible. The article is worse.

First of all, most of the article is just warmed over stale leftovers from previous moral panics about how porn was causing dudes to not want real girlfriends, or how video games were removing men’s interest in sex. None of that was ever true, and it’s not true now. I dare you to find anyone who says that they wouldn’t prefer a real human relationship to an AI girlfriend.

But Vittert, who apparently is a professor of data science, is sure it’s happening. There are four paragraphs that start out by saying that an AI girlfriend “seems so ridiculous,” followed by her explaining why it “might sound enticing,” because you can set your own preferences. But, um, that’s… not why people actually date. Or likely why they are interested in an AI companion.

It seems likely that the reason many are interested in AI companions is loneliness. But, there’s little evidence anyone is using it as a substitute for a human companion. It’s there for those who are lonely and need someone to talk to, and a virtual AI one is better than nothing.

Yet, Vittert (again, who apparently teaches data science) takes this to mean that men are going for AI girlfriends instead of real girlfriends, and therefore, they’re not making babies. And without babies, there will be no one to pay for Medicare or Social Security.

While the concept of an AI girlfriend may seem like a joke, it really isn’t that funny. It is enabling a generation of lonely men to stay lonely and childless, which will have devastating effects on the U.S. economy in less than a decade.  

Really.

They are choosing AI girlfriends over real women, meaning they don’t have relationships with real women, don’t marry them and then don’t have and raise babies with them. America desperately needs people to have more babies, but all the signs are pointing toward fewer relationships, fewer marriages and fewer babies.

I know that there are some people (hi Elon!) who keep insisting we need more babies, but… there is basically nothing scientific that supports this argument. The population of the earth continues to grow. We are not at risk of running out of people.

And, if the argument is just that, say, the US needs more people, there’s an easy way to do that: lessen our ridiculous restrictions on immigration.

Either way, there is no way that “AI girlfriends” are leading people to have fewer babies. I guarantee you that sex with an actual human being is way, way, way better than sexting with an imaginary companion. No one is “remaining childless” because they think they’d prefer a bot on a phone to a real human being.

Also, for a “data scientist” you’d think that this argument would be supported with actual data. Except, what data is put in there is the kind of data you use to obfuscate a point, rather than strengthen one.

She points to Pew’s regular study of how many young people say they’re single, noting that way more young men say they are than young women:

Let’s look at the hard numbers. More than 60 percent of young men (ages 18-30) are single, compared to only 30 percent of women the same age. One in five men report not having a single close friend, a number that has quadrupled in the last 30 years. The amount of social engagement with friends dropped by 20 hours per month over the pandemic and is still decreasing.

So, I hate that I have to explain this to a true data science professor, but, um, if the women aren’t single, then there’s less of a problem on the baby front, because they’re the ones who make the babies. But really, the number discrepancy (you can see the actual data) seems like there’s a much more logical explanation that is not “AI girlfriends” and it is… that men and women view relationships differently. It seems that a much more reasonable explanation of why 63% of 18 to 29 year old men and only 34% of 18 to 29 year old women say they are single… is that some of the women in that age group consider themselves in a relationship with men who think they’re actually casually dating around.

And, yes, that could be considered kinda sad. But, it has nothing to do with AI girlfriends, and it’s hard to see how that has any impact on likelihood of babies, let alone the impact on social security and medicare, as the article suggests. I mean, basic logic suggests the final sentence below has fuck all to do with everything that precedes it:

Put another way, we don’t have enough people to work, and therefore we won’t be able to pay our bills, not just to other countries, but to ourselves. We spent more than $1.6 trillion in 2021 on Medicare and Medicaid, with the number of Americans on Medicare expected to increase by 50 percent by 2030, to more than 80 million people. But over the same period, we will have only 10 million more Americans joining the workforce.

And that is just health care. In 1940, there were 42 workers per beneficiary of Social Security. Today, there are only 2.8 workers per beneficiary, and that number is getting smaller. We are going broke, and the young men who will play a huge role in determining our nation’s future are going there with AI girlfriends in their pockets.

Again, if our concern is not enough people to work, and not enough people contributing to social safety nets, immigration is right there. AI has nothing to do with it. Also, if this is such a concern now, why are you sharing trends from decades ago when AI companions really only became a thing in the past year?

And, must we even get into how wrong this article is about how AI works?

By definition, the AI learns from your reactions and is capable of giving you exactly what you want to hear or see, every single time.

AI might learn from you, but, um, it is not capable of “giving you exactly what you want to hear or see, every single time.” Especially not as an alternative to an actual live human being.

Look, I get it, there are all sorts of moral panics we’re hearing about AI these days, but can we at least keep them in the realm of possibility, and not in the form of “Futurama, but real”?

Filed Under: ai, ai girlfriends, liberty vittert, medicare, population decline, social security