China's Regulators Take Aim at "AI Boyfriends"
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
In a sense, that might be a bit telling of the modern day society: in what world is it so difficult to make meaningful connections to people, that if a real human relationship can be like 5x more meaningful (made up numbers, but surely people will agree that a real relationship can have more depth) than whatever the AI can provide, and people still choose that over the real thing? Or maybe the average person kind of sucks, or the way relationships are treated sucks, or maybe the AI is like crack for impressionable brains, or people don't want a real relationship and just want some sycophantic whatever, I don't know.
Maybe it's a numbers game and some people will never find that for real (gender skew, demographics etc.), maybe it's a failing at those people not being properly socialized, maybe they themselves have something that society doesn't value ("Be yourself! No, not like that."), or just aren't pleasant for any number of reasons, don't have a third place to go for, don't have money to go and partake in social activities, have been brainwashed by hateful social media propaganda or any other mix of circumstances.
Feels like it's probably easier to ban AI and pretend all of the other issues don't exist, rather than addressing them.
I've also got $50 on "massive fake jobs program", because the unemployment will be a social / psychological disaster even if the economics turn out to be straightforward.
That accelerated when big tech companies became advertisement companies. Suddenly, there was a push to increase time on the screen thru mass data gathering.
As far as it is profitable to keep people's noses glued to a screen there is going to be an increase on people that is alone and disconnected.
Even dating is done thru apps that promote looking for the perfect inexistent partner. The more you look for a partner and the less you get one the more profits they get. Something should have never been a business.
~$5T/year in profits from the US, concentrated to the ~10% of American households who hold ~93% of equities, while the socioeconomic and social systems continue towards failure. Progress! /s
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644650 (citations)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49357337 (citations)
U.S. workers' share of national income falls to a new low - https://www.axios.com/2026/08/06/ai-boom-labor-workers-incom... - August 6th, 2026
Most Americans don't earn enough to afford basic costs of living, analysis finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44119317 - May 2025 (Report: https://www.lisep.org/mql)
It's friction right? The last 150 years of progress have been all about removing friction.
And relationships are a great source of friction.
As a side note, I think it's this push for frictionlessness, this is the same force which has resulted in the loss of meaning.
Structure and community are seen as oppressive.
At last, we have been liberated from both.
This leads to people paying for services and products they don't need which leads to an atrophying of basic skills.
What makes you believe this? We had this story[1] just a few days ago where Waymo up and decided to pull over and hand passengers who had guns on them over to the police. If anything, I would trust AI less to keep a conversation private and not flag me for one of its many programmed "safety" triggers.
People would rather chill and be single than date the wrong guy, even if they aren’t bringing much to the table themselves…
[0] - same energy as the teen girls have low self esteem due to magazine covers and instagram.
People who want to do stuff get off the apps. There are plenty of hot folks who never say yes who wind up on those apps for years.
Lots of uggos are also getting off the apps because they actually go on dates.
Personality matters a lot. Saying yes is very important. Everyone has a million excuses to say no.
I’ve been married for 15 years. When I found my wife even dating apps were much more slow paced, I just feel for the current generation.
The pain I suffer gets worse with every setback and affects my work life for extended periods of time. Past a certain point you need to weigh the risks and tradeoffs, and in my calculus, for my own survival, it swung in favor of no relationships.
Everyone has a different strategy and I prescribe nothing, that is my own way
You don't know the pain of others, especially what others hide from you.
I applaud the CCP for getting out in front of this one. It's way more a concern in my mind than data centers
What good timing, thanks!
"What to do when Ai says 'I love you'"
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/18/g-s1177-78041/what-to-do-when...
I spent some time on the phone with him the other day, as he wandered around the city where he's working.
It was Sunday there, most people's day off, and he was amazed at how many people were out in the public parks, playing chess and go, kids on the playground equipment. inter-generational interaction.
His impression was that China has a much higher level of people randomly interacting with other's IRL than here in the US.
most of those people were likely a bit older, already retired, and were out watching their grandchildren. sunday there is no school or kindergarten.
That means that if you go out for a walk you would be 10 times more likely to run into a friendly stranger who wants to chat.
I've never lived in Manhattan, but I have visited there many times, I would definitely say that walking the sidewalks and parks there, it's mostly anonymous, with less stranger conversation that say the US suburbs.
HN is a really interesting comments site. Maybe this is true of most internet comments sites. I'm not sure because this is the only place on the web were I have ever made comments. But it seems like there is a large demographic that just wants to disagree.
Before you start making comparisons, I'd recommend actually going to China and seeing.
If you just want to look at wikipedia, this is a fairly typical modern Chinese city:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing
Yes, very dense, and I can't speak to the public place usage by a broad segment of the population there. But there is no city in the US like this, or any other modern Chinese city.
In general I find the public places in the US to be largely abandoned.
Another related aspect: there are not many publicly visible homeless in China:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202606/1363620.shtml
Making public parks and other places more attractive...
and as european i can also tell you that i am most certainly more likely to talk to someone in manhattan than i would in a european city for example.
Only by taxing the humans and human-based corporations that ultimately pay for it. On a longer timeline, the robots are going to become full-fledged economic actors in their own right.
Zero children = you (the parent) get zero tokens
One child = the parents get 18-years worth of tokens
Two children = the parents get 2 x 18-years worth of tokens
...
It's no use, though. You need a good economic and social outlook to get people to even consider having children. And this ain't it.