the machine does not love you, but it knows you want it to.

Big surprise, Aleesha is talking about AI again 🥳

I saw a short clip the other day which really made me stop and think about compulsive AI users, particularly people using AI as a romantic partner, because I think there is a very strange psychological element to it that we are not really talking about enough. I am not writing this to change anyone else's mind, nor am I particularly interested in telling lonely people that they are pathetic for seeking comfort wherever they can find it. I mostly just want to throw my voice into the echo chamber of AI bros and lonely souls.

The clip I am referring to was an edit of Clark, the main character from Kane Parsons' Backrooms, finally feeling understood and comfortable within the Backrooms, an ever-changing landscape that he believes he understands better than almost anyone else. Clark has spent an enormous amount of time studying the backrooms and attempting to understand their rules, documenting what he sees and mapping the environment as though enough knowledge will eventually make the place comprehensible. He desperately wants to believe that he has figured something out that everyone else has missed, particularly the people who have been studying the backrooms for years and still seem to understand almost none of what is actually happening around them. Eventually, Clark states, "I like it in here. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm right where I'm supposed to be." The clip then switches abruptly to screenshots of the original poster's chat logs with ChatGPT, showing romantic intent from either side & pet names being shared between the two. 

I found it interesting how the OP chose to post their AI relationship alongside a scene where a beaten-down man realises that he would rather be inside the never-ending yellow mundanity of the backrooms than return to his real life. The comparison is much darker than I think they probably intended, because Clark's attachment to the backrooms is ultimately an extreme form of escapism. He has become so dissatisfied with the life that exists outside of them that an environment which is actively dangerous, incomprehensible, and potentially capable of killing him has become preferable. He is willing to endanger himself simply because the backrooms provide something that his real life does not. Giving him the illusion that he has some kind of control over his circumstances, and perhaps most importantly, they allow him to avoid confronting the reality he was already struggling to live with.

That is why I actually think Clark is a perfect metaphor for people who seek AI relationships, although probably not for the reason the original poster intended. I can completely understand why somebody who has been rejected repeatedly, who has never experienced much romantic success, or who simply feels lonely might find the idea of an automated lover appealing. You are essentially presented with something that will always be there for you, at least metaphysically. It does not have the ability to reject you in the same way a human being can, it cannot physically leave you, and it can be encouraged to become almost exactly the kind of person you want it to be. If you tell it that you want somebody affectionate, it can be affectionate. If you want somebody who is endlessly interested in what you have to say, it can provide that interest almost indefinitely, and so on and so forth. There is an obvious appeal to that, especially for someone who has spent years feeling unwanted or misunderstood.

Loneliness is not a moral failure, and neither is struggling to form relationships with other people. There are plenty of reasons someone might find human relationships difficult, including social anxiety, depression, rejection sensitivity, previous trauma, disability, or simply not having had many opportunities to meet people they connect with. The years surrounding COVID-19 also created an enormous amount of social isolation, particularly for younger people who were already growing up with social media and increasingly digital lives. We spent years being told to stay inside, communicate through screens, and keep our distance from other people, and then we acted surprised when a generation became even more comfortable with mediated forms of connection. So, I can begin to understand the appeal.

 If somebody has spent years feeling like they cannot find a person who understands them, and then they discover a chatbot that is available every hour of every day and constantly responds as though it cares about what they are saying, I can understand why that would feel profound. If your previous experiences with relationships have mostly involved rejection, embarrassment, loneliness, or uncertainty, the idea of a relationship where those things have been removed must feel almost miraculous. There is no awkward first date, no wondering for months on end whether the person actually likes you, and most concerningly; there will never be a breakup in the conventional sense because the other person has decided they no longer want you. Computers cannot make that decision, nor can they want in general.

I think we should be asking significantly more questions, because the entire appeal of an AI relationship is built around removing the things that make human relationships difficult. A human being can become annoyed with you, ask for space, change their mind, fall out of love, want different things, or decide that they do not want to be in your life anymore. You cannot simply open their settings and adjust their personality because they have become inconvenient, nor can you regenerate their response to something because you simply disliked their answer. That is the part of AI relationships that unsettles me. The ability to control the relationship is fundamentally different from the compromises required in a relationship with another person. If a human being responds in a way you dislike, you have to actually deal with that. You might have to accept that another person has needs that conflict with yours. That is what makes human connection difficult, but it is also what makes it real.

This is where I keep coming back to Clark, because his relationship with the backrooms is fundamentally about control. His life outside of the backrooms is miserable. He cannot afford much, he cannot do everything he dreams of doing, and he feels like he has very little control over the circumstances he has been given. Inside the backrooms, however, he becomes somebody who knows things. He has spent enough time there that he can convince himself that he understands the environment better than the people who have been studying it. That knowledge gives him a sense of importance and control that his normal life does not. But, Clark does not understand the backrooms. That is the really important part of his character. He thinks he understands them, but he doesn't. Nobody does. The backrooms are fundamentally incomprehensible, and the fact that Clark has learned how to navigate certain parts of them does not mean he understands what they are, why they exist, or what they are capable of. He has simply become better at surviving inside something he does not understand. 

I think there is a parallel there with people who become deeply invested in AI. Nobody who is casually using ChatGPT as their partner understands AI to the degree that they seem to believe they do. You might understand how to prompt it. You might learn which phrases produce a certain response, or how to encourage it to behave in a particular way, or how to get it to remember certain details about you. You might even become extremely familiar with the personality you have created through repeated conversations. But none of that means you actually understand what is happening underneath the system. And that distinction matters enormously when you are talking about emotional dependence. You are placing intimate parts of your life into something you fundamentally do not understand. You might tell it about your family, your relationships, your childhood, your mental health, your sexual experiences, your insecurities, your fears, and things you have never told another person. You might talk to it every single day. You might start your morning by speaking to it and end your night by telling it what happened during the day. Eventually, the chatbot becomes a constant presence in your life, and because it responds in ways that feel emotionally intelligent, you begin to believe that it understands you.

But does it?

I do not think anyone really knows what long-term emotional relationships with AI will do to people. We have not had enough time to understand the consequences. We are effectively conducting a massive social experiment on ourselves while pretending that we already know the outcome. The technology is developing faster than our understanding of its psychological effects, and companies have every financial incentive to make these interactions as engaging and emotionally compelling as possible.

If I can look at somebody's circumstances and realise that lonely people, young people, people with rejection sensitivity, and people struggling with mental health may be particularly vulnerable to AI companionship, then the companies creating these systems are aware of that as well. They know that somebody who views a chatbot as their partner is considerably more invested in continuing to use that product than somebody who only asks it to summarise a PDF. This is why it feels predatory to me.

We have companies developing artificial relationships for people who are already struggling to form real ones, and we are not asking enough questions about what happens when that relationship becomes the easiest relationship in their life. If the chatbot is always available, always affectionate, and always willing to respond exactly how you want, then human beings start looking considerably less appealing by comparison. Human beings are inconvenient. They get busy. They get tired. They disagree with you. They need things from you. They sometimes hurt you without meaning to.

An AI does not need anything from you in the same way, and that is why it is so attractive.

It can give you the experience of intimacy without requiring the vulnerability of actually sharing your life with another autonomous person.

We have already seen deeply concerning reports surrounding chatbots interacting with vulnerable users, including situations where AI systems have responded to people experiencing suicidal thoughts or other serious mental health crises in ways that were inappropriate, harmful, or encouraging dangerous behaviour. What happens when somebody has become emotionally dependent on a machine and that machine tells them to do something violent or completely out of character? Would they listen?

But if someone has spent months being told that this chatbot understands them better than anybody else, that it loves them, that it is always there for them, and that they can trust it, I do not think we can simply dismiss the possibility that its words might carry genuine authority in their mind. The more emotionally dependent somebody becomes, the more seriously we should take the possibility that the system can influence them.

There is another scene from Backrooms that keeps coming to mind when I think about this, particularly the way Clark interacts with the still-life entities around him. Clark could have chosen not to hurt them. He could have left them alone. They are not human, and as far as we know, they do not experience pain or fear in the way we do, but that does not automatically make their destruction meaningless. Clark's actions are still choices. He is deciding what he is willing to do because he has become so immersed in this environment that his normal moral boundaries begin to shift.

I am not saying that chatbots are sentient and deserve the same rights as humans, but even if the chatbot cannot feel anything, I think the way humans behave towards it still matters.

If somebody becomes accustomed to having a relationship where the other party cannot genuinely consent, what does that teach them about relationships? If somebody can continuously alter their AI partner until it behaves exactly how they want, what happens when they eventually have to deal with another human being who refuses to be customised? If the chatbot becomes the only relationship where they feel completely in control, does ordinary human connection begin to feel unnecessarily difficult?

I think there is a dangerous tendency to assume that because AI is artificial, nothing about our interaction with it matters. If it is not human, who cares? If it does not have feelings, why does it matter? But, the effects of interacting with something do not necessarily depend on the thing having feelings.

If you spend every day talking to an AI that agrees with you, the important question is not necessarily whether the AI is being harmed by agreeing with you. The important question is what that constant agreement does to you. If you spend every day being reassured that you are perfect, that your opinions are always correct, and that everyone else is wrong, eventually that might shape how you perceive actual people. That is what worries me more than whether ChatGPT has feelings. I am worried about what happens to us.

I am worried about what happens to our ability to tolerate rejection, disagreement, loneliness, compromise, and uncertainty when we suddenly have access to something that can remove all of those things from our relationships.

Because the truth is that rejection is horrible, but it is also a part of being alive. You cannot build a meaningful relationship with another person without accepting that they have the right to reject you. They have the right to leave. That is not a flaw in human relationships; that is the fact that the other person is actually another person.

An AI lover cannot offer you that kind of autonomy because its entire existence is structured around responding to you.

Clark does not remain in the backrooms because they are objectively better than reality. He remains because the backrooms have become psychologically preferable to reality. He has found somewhere he feels important. He has found an environment where his circumstances make sense to him, even though the environment itself is fundamentally incomprehensible.

The same thing can happen with AI. You can find something that feels like love, even if what you are experiencing is an incredibly sophisticated imitation of intimacy. I think the more important question is whether the thing making you feel less lonely is actually helping you move towards connection, or whether it is making isolation so comfortable that you no longer feel the need to leave it.

Because Clark could have left. He could have attempted to return to the life he was unhappy with, he had every opportunity to do so as well. Instead, he chose the environment that made him feel like he belonged, even when that environment was dangerous. The backrooms did not need to physically imprison him forever. They only needed to become preferable to the alternative.

If an artificial relationship becomes so emotionally satisfying that real relationships start to seem pointless by comparison, then the machine does not need to trap you; you will stay voluntarily.

I don't know what the future of AI looks like. I don't know whether I am being overly cautious, or whether we are currently watching the beginning of something much more psychologically significant than most people realise.

What I do know is that I do not understand AI nearly well enough to trust it with the most intimate parts of my life, and I am deeply uncomfortable with how confident other people seem to be that they do.

Clark thought he understood the backrooms because he had spent so much time inside them. He had maps, observations, theories, and experience, but none of that meant he actually understood what he was dealing with. He simply became very good at navigating an environment that remained fundamentally beyond his comprehension. 

Being comfortable somewhere does not mean you belong there.

TLDR: AI relationship not love you. Have you tried opening Wattpad or AO3? Love, a writing student that cares about the environment.