Weekend Listen: Artificial Intimacy from CBC’s Understood
6/6/202637 min
What happens when a human becomes intimately enmeshed with a chatbot? From people who’ve married their bots or who grieve their loved ones with the help of AI, host Victoria Hetherington (author of The Friend Machine) dives into the stories of the people who have invited these digital avatars into their hearts, minds, and even beds. And asks what do we gain and what do we stand to lose? Our intimacy, our resilience, even our grasp on reality? This latest season of Understood looks at who made the decisions that allowed chatbots to move way beyond digital assistants and into the most intimate parts of our lives.
Understood takes you deep inside the seismic shifts reshaping our world right now. From online porn and crypto chaos to the rise of tech oligarchs, deepfake AI, and the broken promises of the internet.
More episodes of Understood are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/AIxIdeas
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSarah Gibson Tuttle0:00
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Speaker 20:57
[instrumental music] This is a CBC podcast.
Speaker 31:01
[instrumental music] Hi there. I'm Nahlah Ayed, host of Ideas. What happens when a human becomes enmeshed with a chatbot? From marrying bots to grieving loved ones with the help of AI, the latest season of CBC's Understood dives into the stories of the people who have invited these digital avatars into their hearts, minds, and even beds, and asks, "What do we gain and what do we stand to lose when chatbots move into the most intimate parts of our lives?