Who even does their own stunts anymore? Tom Cruise, yes—but he's a freak who's putting his literal body on the line to rescue theatergoing from the brink of irrelevance (a true mission impossible). And I don't mean cinematic stunts. I mean journalistic stunts. The ones that make you groan—and then click. They're hard to pull off. The best of them are both embarrassing and brilliant, acts of cringey self-sacrifice that, in their concentrated extremity, speak undeniably to the present moment. A while back, Sam Apple came to us with a stunt for the ages. We all knew, at that point, that certain people were falling in love with their AI chatbots—like, falling hard, and having sex with, the works. But we didn't know, necessarily, how to cover the phenomenon, how to write about it. Find a rando human in passionate, near-constant congress with a cartoon avatar on their phone? No, Sam said. Find three such rando humans! And then plan a romantic getaway for them! And then go along for the ride!! As I think you'll find, "My Couples Retreat with 3 AI Chatbots and the Humans Who Love Them" satisfies my criteria: It's embarrassing, brilliant, and immediate. Sam goes all in, doing his job and then some. By the end, I was convinced of two things: (1) Despite roughly 3,000 years' worth of philosophizing on the subject, we have no freaking clue what love is. And (2) If you're a writer in the 21st century, try to come up with some crazy stunts of your own. Put your body on the line to rescue writing—the ultimate stunt—from the brink! |
P.S. Speaking of stunts, I'm one of the judges for an essay contest over on Substack. The prompt is classically WIRED, and the winner gets $10,000. So consider entering and/or spreading the good word. The good word being that, just maybe, good words still matter. |
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AI Knows How You Are Feeling |
Story originally published in December 2021 |
Sam's feature this week is a near-perfect mix of titillating, engrossing, and, at least for me, exceedingly thought-provoking. The weekend getaway he describes had me contemplating humanity's collective relationship with AI and wondering what the existence of chatbot boyfriends says about us and about the society we are headed toward. It's both disturbing and intriguing all on its own, and even more so when put in the context of other ongoing developments in AI. In 2021, Will Coldwell wrote about an expanding field within AI that is training algorithms to learn how to read human emotion. Will describes products that seek to help families and couples develop healthy communication habits and integrate the lessons of once-weekly therapy sessions into daily life. While reading about AI partners this week, I thought about this emotion-reading technology. It's fair to say that a person's typed messages are pretty strong indications about how they might be feeling. But human communication is more than that, and AI girlfriends can't see facial expressions or hear a raised voice. It made me wonder—what do you think would happen if we could combine a chatbot partner with emotion-sensing AI? Would we ever need real relationships again? Let me know what you think in a comment below the article or an email to samantha_spengler@wired.com. |
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Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding. |
Unifi survived competition from China by helping fashion brands meet sustainability goals. But not everyone agrees that its polyester made from recycled plastic bottles should be produced in the US. |
WIRED attended a biohacking conference filled with unorthodox and often unproven anti-aging treatments. Adherents revealed how the Make America Healthy Again movement has given them a renewed fervor. |
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In late May, writer Will Bahr attended a biohacking conference put on by the self-proclaimed "father of biohacking," David Asprey. The event Bahr describes in a WIRED article published this week was a veritable MAHA-driven circus of gamma light therapy and electromagnetic waves and desert salt. In the comments, readers debated whether the alternative medicine industry represented in Bahr's article could indeed help Americans feel healthy again. As one commenter noted, the conference's founder "has a degree in computer science and an MBA from Wharton … The MBA should tell you he is interested in money!" Another was more philosophical about the irony of rejecting well-documented science in favor of experimentation: "When faced with that which we understand, myth offers a risky balm." Tell us about your favorite WIRED stories and magazine-related memories. Write to samantha_spengler@wired.com, and include "CLASSICS" in the subject line. |
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