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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that artificial intelligence chatbots could increase loneliness among young men who prefer AI-powered “perfect girlfriends.”
Schmidt, who took the helm at Google in 2001 and stepped down in 2011, discussed the dangers of young men interacting with an “AI girlfriend” who is perfect in every way.
“That kind of obsession is possible, especially for people who are not fully formed,” Schmidt told entrepreneur and NYU Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway during his podcast “The Prof G Show” on Sunday.
“Parents are going to have to be more involved for all the obvious reasons, but at the end of the day, parents can only control what their sons and daughters are doing within reason,” Schmidt added.
While AI-powered chatbots pose a danger to users of all ages, young men are particularly vulnerable, the former Google executive said.
“There’s lots of evidence that there’s now a problem with young men,” Schmidt said. “In many cases, the path to success for young men has been, shall we say, been made more difficult because they’re not as educated as the women are now.”
In 2019, women surpassed men to account for more than half of the college-educated workforce in the United States, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data.
Women have continued to outpace men in college enrollments — so much so that the gender gap among college graduates is larger in some states than racial and ethnic disparities, according to Forbes.
“Many of the traditional paths [for young men] are no longer as available and so they turn to the online world for enjoyment and sustenance,” Schmidt said, “and because of the social media algorithms they find like-minded people who ultimately radicalize them, either in a horrific way, like terrorism, or in the kind of way you’re describing — they’re just maladjusted.”
He called the potential for young men to fall in love and grow obsessed with their AI girlfriends “an unexpected problem of existing technology.”
Some young men have already fallen victim to dangerous new technology.
A Florida mother is suing Character.ai, an AI-powered chatbot, and Google, which struck a deal in August to license the chatbot’s technology, after her 14-year-old son committed suicide in February after a lifelike chatbot girlfriend told him to “come home” after months of obsessive messages, according to the suit.
Schmidt said teenagers are not ready to handle complex, AI-powered technology.
“You put a 12 or 13-year-old in front of these things, and they have access to every evil as well as every good in the world,” he said. “And they’re not ready to take it.”
During the interview, Schmidt argued that regulatory laws, like the US’ Section 230, which protects tech giants from being held liable for the content on their platforms, should be reformed “to allow for liability in the worst possible cases.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission pick Brendan Carr has argued for restrictions on Section 230, though he has focused on adding anti-discrimination protections that would prohibit companies from censoring posts, excluding illegal posts like child sex abuse.
But Schmidt said he is not expecting much progress on Section 230 over the next four years, since Trump’s administration has bigger fish to fry.
And tech companies today are so valuable that “it’s likely to take some kind of a calamity to cause a change in regulation.”
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.
