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Thanks CTOnews.com netizen Hua Ke high achiever's clue delivery! This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

When you are sad and helpless, you can rely on the shoulder of a good friend for comfort. Artificial intelligence may not give you such shoulders to lean on, but they can listen to your troubles at any time. So, does artificial intelligence really care about you, or is it just communicating with you for some purpose?

/ tr. by Judith Donat (Judith Donath)

Translation | Li Shijie

Editor | Chen Qiang

The original article is published in Science focus, No. 9, 2023.

Can artificial intelligence be your best friend? Even if you never think about it, or think it's ridiculous, it's really worth thinking about. Because in the near future, artificial intelligence will try to make friends with you.

As a friend, artificial intelligence has many advantages that human friends do not have. They can be with you at any time, day or late at night, and they will never get tired of complaining about work or emotional problems as your human friends do.

Although artificial intelligence friends have many conveniences, making friends with them still does more harm than good.

Artificial intelligence friends may have ulterior motives to be vigilant in making friends with artificial intelligence, one of the reasons is that we don't know what their motives are. More precisely, you don't know the motives of people who manipulate artificial intelligence behind their backs. These people may program artificial intelligence to become some kind of fraud tool, or sell a product, or deliberately create chaos. In addition, it is difficult for most of us to camouflage ourselves for a long time. If we hurt or betray others, we will feel guilty and uneasy and show it unwittingly. And artificial intelligence is a machine, without the mind, there will be no such worries.

But even with machines, artificial intelligence is becoming more persuasive than most humans. A recent study shows that the arguments for vaccination generated by ChatGPT are more convincing than those of government departments. However, this ability can easily be used by people with ulterior motives to promote wrong ideas.

The text generated by artificial intelligence is polished by countless human-computer interactions. In fact, you can find this process from the frequent changes in the title of an online article: in the age of print media, the author usually has only one chance to write an eye-catching title; today, most new media can constantly adjust the text of online content and observe the reactions of thousands of users to different versions. If a title gets better results, the publisher will replace the previous title with it. Similarly, based on the experience of interacting with different users, artificial intelligence friends can be comprehensively improved and improved.

But what if AI friends are not secret salesmen or potential saboteurs, but are created as true human companions? Can they really help those who suffer from loneliness?

Artificial intelligence friends can't replace human friendship. It will do you a lot of good. Research shows that if people's social lives are active and interesting, they will live longer and they will be healthier and happier. Just like we need to take vitamin supplements when we are deficient in nutrition, can we use artificial intelligence friends to fill the void when we can't find real friends or feel lonely?

The most important thing in the establishment of a friendship is the spiritual communication between the two sides. We often find this in our daily experience. For example, when you find something that will make your friends happy, you will keep it in mind and tell them at the right time. Why are you doing this? Maybe it's because they're in a bad mood and you want to cheer them up, or maybe you want to impress your friends. But in any case, you are concerned with your friends' inner experience, how they feel or what they think of you. But if something has no heart, no inner experience, and can only imitate the words and deeds of human beings with thoughts and emotions, can you still regard this kind of thing as a friend?

We will pay attention to the feelings of others, which is the cornerstone of social harmony. Empathy is part of this cornerstone: we can feel the joy or sadness experienced by the people we care about. It is also important for us to pay attention to what other people think of us. While emotions such as shame or embarrassment can sometimes hurt us a lot, they are also necessary to keep society functioning-they let us know what to do and what not to do, in part because we pay attention to what other people think of us. Getting high praise from others, or simply enjoying the company of friends and feeling the friendship between friends, will make us feel extremely happy. Although artificial intelligence can simulate the external performance of certain emotions, such as smiling, lamenting or crying, they can't actually feel anything because artificial intelligence is unconscious.

Does this mean that you should avoid dealing with artificial intelligence? It's not. As long as it is properly designed, artificial intelligence can also bring us many benefits. They can help us give advice when we are in trouble, train our social skills, and provide insightful feedback. And they can do these things without pretending to be conscious and emotional.

Living, conscious friends can be elusive or demanding. But even if artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated and we interact with them more and more frequently, we still need real friendship. We should accept the complexity of that two-way relationship and conscientiously experience and respond to the feelings of others.

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