Love in the time of Artificial Intelligence: Valentine’s Day 2030

The thought of writing this came from a comment today on my other article “If robots will do everything, what will Humans do: why AI Rhetoric deeply worries me.” It asks a few questions on the probable impact of AI on other aspects of life and the need to prepare for the future on those dimensions too. One of the aspects was relationships.

A reader commented very definitively that “AI impacting relationships is out of question”. He seemed to be sure.

It seems uncanny that the comment came on Valentine’s Day. Maybe St. Valentine wants us to reflect on this question a little further :)

…To see if there is a possibility that AI will or will not change human relationships as they exist today.

Archies Card Store used to be my favorite. I could spend a long time there checking out the gifts and greeting cards, and leaving the store with a bagful of stuff I planned to gift over the next few months.

Archies stores have almost disappeared, or shrunk in size where they do exist, and lost their charm.

When was the last time you got a hand-written greeting card? Or gave out one for that matter.

A better question:

How do you get a bulk of your birthday and anniversary wishes these days?

Looks familiar?

We aren’t calling each other anymore on Birthdays and special days (barring close family and friends). It is mostly some readily available “forwards” that do the job.

We don’t even type out the little message, because our smart phones will already suggest “Birthday” when we type “Happy”, so we just select it.

Really how meaningful can a message be, which did not even have one full minute of our attention. Honestly?

We know heart of heart that many a times, it is just a social obligation, or even peer pressure on social media to send wishes — to not have our name on the defaulter’s list.

Now this is social media, not AI.

But this social media-led behavior change has laid a rock-solid foundation for AI to manage our relationships in future.

Laid the foundation for relationships to move from mechanical to automatic.

Following are some ways AI will enter the domain of relationships for good or bad in the foreseeable tomorrow.

#1. We will be able to purchase “relationship management” packages — Silver (for not very social people), Gold (some family, friends, social circle), Platinum (to be in everyone’s good books)

Here is how it will work..

• Choose the relationships
• Prioritize them basis preference (boss, spouse, handsome co-worker, parents, etc)
• Select engagement model including — frequency (Boss gets wished on birthday, christmas, summer solstice, etc; spouse on birthday and anniversary, co-worker… well never mind); type (Intellectual, romantic, obligatory, etc)
• And, I guess that’s it

AI does the job for you from here on, helps you manage your relationships exactly the way you want, without lifting a finger!

It…

• Mines data on the individuals on their choices and preferences based on browsing records
• Orders gifts and flowers and holidays online based on “engagement settings” (hey you will never be grounded for forgetting any special day anymore!)
• Sends greetings on the pre-selected forums (text, snap, instagram, whatever)
• Sends general keep-in-touch messages like “hey what’s up”, and responds to received messages rhetorically based on on your life logs and relationship with the person. E.g. to a friend whose AI sends you a message “what’s up”, your AI responds based on your Trivago booking — which the AI personally made (lol.. “personally”), saying “great, planning a holiday next week”. But if the same message comes from a person you flagged irritating neighbour, to the same question your AI responds “Very busy, ttyl, thanks for the message!”

Amazing how productive we will become, having rid ourselves of the most mundane things in life, no?

#2 Parents won’t need to worry about kids (or kids won’t bother about them)

• Fisher-Price is launching a smart cycle for kids (and there will be many others). Kids can learn on their own, be engaged productively, parents can review progress. Parents can guilt-free spend hours at work, while the child pedals a smart cycle, in-front of smart TV and becomes so smart in the process.

There will also be child-robots to give company to the real child.

And given, we will build no relationship with the child when s/he is a child, why would there be any relationship when the child is no longer a child?

There you go, AI will take care of our kids for us. What more do we want? We are so sorted.

Just one more mundane thing taken off our hands. Now we can really lead a very productive and efficient life!

#3 Students won’t care for teachers as much

• Ed Tech is coming full-speed and schools are refusing to evolve from their information dissemination roles. We are being polite. For all we know, we will have teacher-less schools before we get driver-less cars, if things continue the same way. Adaptive and personalised AI learning will take care of each child uniquely.

We thought, that the teaching community at large does not seem to understand their role in building a relationship with the child. We have been unnecessarily crying hoarse that enough teachers don’t care enough for children.

I think teachers are the earliest adopters of AI. While others are trying hard to upgrade to survive in the world of AI, teachers are the first ones to have welcomed and made way for AI, by rendering their own selves redundant in having consciously chosen to not evolve. Robots will never forget this solemn sacrifice.

Now we have solved the problem of teacher-student relationship, well done. AI does the teaching, and humans were never interested in the relationship anyways.

So we are sorted here too. A highly productive society we will become.

What do you think?

And this is not science fiction or 20 years away. Some of this already exists, or coming any time now.

I just have 3 questions.

#1. Do we really think human life and relationships will not change in ways we cannot even imagine today? Or maybe we can, but we are not spending time thinking about it or preparing for it. Are we okay with it?

#2. All of AI focus is — it will help us become more efficient and productive. Agreed. But is the metric of human relationship the same as metric for industrial output?

Have we traded ‘meaningfulness’ with ‘efficiency’ even in relationships?

#3. What makes a good relationship?

• Sending a copy-paste message on every occasion or a phone call or a handwritten message on maybe just a few occasions?
• Ordering some AI driven flowers online or taking time to curate the gift or flowers yourself?
• Do good relationships happen due to efficiency or taking pains?
• Should we manage relationships or build relationships?

You decide for yourself.

Oh yeah.. about the title of the blog, I must write atleast a line on it. Valentine’s day 2030.

This much I know. If I find that my husband has managed to give me thatperfect gift, I will wonder for once, if he has really begun to understand me that well, or if his Siri sneaked on me.. ha ha

Happy Valentine’s Day (2030)… :))