The connection between AI and its users (and perhaps even its co-creators) appears, to me, reminiscent of how many theistic believers relate to the god they believe in.
They strive to understand this external intelligence they cannot entirely grasp or explain; they believe that this “being” is capable of understanding and responding to them; and so they put in effort and time to learn how to craft “prompts” (or prayers, in religious lingo) that appeal best to the deity they pray to in hopes that said intelligence would help them solve a problem, create a better life, help them figure out this or that.
But it is not that simple – or else all the above would be but a thinly veiled attempt at proving that dependence on AI for life-stuffs is but the new and trending religion. (Which it well might be. But I shall leave that to your own deliberations.)
One thing this existence of relationships between a person and different “unseens” highlights a reality my lazy mind often tries to downplay and oversimplify, which is this:
Relationships are nuanced.
Take friendships for example. My childhood friend from 16 years ago (who I still write letters to) is as much of a friend to me as the fellow I started exchanging emails with a year ago (without ever having met in person), or the person I hung out with in the city for an afternoon last week (who I only started talking to less than two months ago).
They all fall under the category of “friend,” and I might appreciate them equally in depth of “like”; but each of them mean something different to me because of the nuances around our relationships.
The childhood friend knows more of how I have changed over the years, but may know less of the “me” I am today due to the distance between our current paths in life. The email buddy and I have conversations over the nerdiest of topics sprinkled with noodling-worthy witticisms (mostly his) and random comments on niche hobbies (sometimes mine), but what we see and read of each other on our respective blogs/websites and through our email discussions make up just about all we know of each other. The new friend might be more aware of what I am like as a person in the present compared to the other two friends, but time and continued dialogue is still needed to clarify the just-getting-to-know-you assumptions we still hold about each other.
And that is just the nuance of context around a relationship, history with someone, and the way you got to know them affecting the relationship.
What about those even closer to you? What about when you stack multiple definitions and connections onto one relationship? What about relationships that change over time?
My mother and father have never been just “mom and dad” to me – over the years, they have been my caregivers, comforters, guardians, friends, enemies, opponents, obstacles, debaters, teachers, and doctors. Not everything all at once, of course. But definitely three to four at a time. (Plus their subjective reality that I would always be their little girl, no matter how old I am.)
The multiple layers to our relationships make it difficult to have meaningful and practical conversations, sometimes. When I want to move out, I approach the situation as an adult making her own life decisions, while they might see it me being an adult child who is forsaking her family for selfish (and potentially stupid) reasons. And given the nuances in our relationship, both perspectives may be equally true (or at least be legitimate and possible). The trouble is having the grace and patience to work with each other as we figure out which nuances of our relationship should take precedence when our overt values and/or desires conflict. It is tough when head-to-head conflicts occur over discovering what exactly we mean to each other and how our external actions feed into or go against the defined existing relationship.
It gets even trickier when we add one inevitable and largely unpredictable element (in terms of impact) into the equation – time.
Recently, someone warned me not to get too close to the elderly folks I work with, because it would make the inevitable separation that much harder. (He was around my age, and also cared for a few residents at the nursing home. As an explanation for that statement, he recounted the story of how he had gotten to know the gentleman whose funeral he would be attending in a week’s time.)
His mom, he said, would tell him to keep a distance between his clients and himself. But then, he would reply, how do you do that when you spend so much time with each other them, week after week? The more time you spend with someone, the more you come to understand them; and the more you understand them, the more you come to love them. It is not a choice of whether to care; it becomes a struggle of being able to care without falling apart too much when the relationship ends.
And so it is. Time poured into a relationship changes the depth and nuances of that relationship as it progresses. Sometimes, as with friends-to-lovers or lovers-to-enemies, it also changes the definitions of said relationship. Some of my clients have remained strictly my clients (and half-friends, I guess) for over ten months; other clients have become my friends and even potential business partners in half that time. Things do change when you add hours, days, and weeks into the mix of personalities, expectations, and relational structures already between you.
The roles we play in each other’s lives – whether with God, AI, people, animals, or the world – shift and merge and shift again over time. To deny that each relationship we have is more nuanced and complex than just the one definition we default to placing each other within is to do disservice to what we are and what we could be to each other.
By stepping out of lazy, simplistic thinking and embracing the multi-faceted threads of connection between yourself and the people around you – keeping in mind, besides the nuances that already exist, the impact time and new memories affect such nuances – you honor who they are to you and vice versa, while allowing the humaness of both of you to flourish and develop.