Kids From Strong Families Less Likely to Fall in Love with Robots

Authors: John Stonestreet and Shane Morris

The complications of creating artificially intelligent robots for service, companionship, or sex has been the plot of movies and TV shows for decades, from Terminator to Bicentennial Man to A.I. to Westworld. While some of these entertainment properties portrayed the human-AI relationships as potentially good, others warned of the inevitable, unforeseen dangers. All assumed that such “relationships” are indeed possible, that electronic or robotic entities can achieve self-awareness, human-like emotions, and authentic relationships.   

Perhaps the years of being primed by science fiction explains the curiosity about and even openness to relationships with emerging, real-world AI. For example, a group of researchers who analyzed a million ChatGPT conversations recently reported that “sexual role-playing” was the second most prevalent way in which people are relating to AI. Other uses include companionship and even therapy. The Verge reported that the Psychologist bot on one AI character generator service has received more than 95 million messages. The same service allows users to generate a near infinite variety of customizable AI “friends.” A new YouGov/Institute for Family Studies survey of 2,000 adults under age 40 found that 10% of respondents were open to having an AI friendship, while a quarter believed that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships.

According to another analysis from the Institute for Family Studies, those who tend to believe what was until recently considered fiction fall into two groups: those whose human relationships are already absent or broken; and those who already turn to digital substitutes, especially pornography, for intimacy. In contrast, young adults from intact families are significantly less comfortable treating AI entities like human beings. 61% who still had married parents at age 16 were against AI “friendships,” while only 52% from non-intact households were against them. Those who grew up without married parents were also more likely to say they were “not sure” or have “mixed feelings” about friendships with artificial intelligences. 

While opposition to sexual or romantic relationships with AI was a bit higher across the board, the same general trend held. 75% of single young adults from intact families were “against or uncomfortable with” AI romances, compared with 66% of those from non-intact families. And tellingly, the group most open to befriending or dating a chat bot, according to this survey, were those who said they were already daily porn users. 

In short, less real-world family stability equals more openness to AI “relationships” of all types. More addiction to virtual substitutes for human intimacy equals more openness to “sex bots” and other erotic uses of AI. The clear pattern reveals more about who we are as human beings than about AI’s ability to know, think, or love.  

God made us to be in relation with parents, friends, spouses, and children, and those with genuine bonds in their lives are less likely to fall for artificial substitutes. Conversely, those who lack a strong family foundation, either because of an absent parent, divorce, or death are more vulnerable to emerging technologies that mimic these things. Those already accustomed or addicted to a screen instead of a spouse for erotic fulfillment are sitting ducks now that the screens are “talking” back. 

There is both warning and encouragement in these numbers. The warning is that our longstanding, generational forms of relational brokenness, family fracture, loneliness, and addiction are likely to metastasize in the age of AI. Those who turn to simulated relationships will not find what they’re looking for, because contrary to much science fiction, these things aren’t human, or even conscious. They will be, quite literally, looking for love in all the wrong places. Sadly, that won’t stop many from trying and wandering further into unreality in denial of their God-given humanity. 

The encouragement from these surveys is reality’s inoculating effect. Anyone who knows God’s real blessings are, in a sense, forearmed against dangerous substitutes. To borrow an analogy from C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory, those who know what is meant by a holiday at the sea will not settle for “mud pies in the slums.”  

Intact families, real friendships, and genuine romantic love make AI counterfeits less appealing. This should motivate all who have found the fulfillment of being in relationship with God to protect and cultivate these blessings, and to invite those without them into the warmth of genuine relationships, to know and be known by God and their fellow image bearers. After all, the evidence suggests that when they know the difference, people prefer relationships with other people over even the most sophisticated of digital products.