70% of people in the UK are lonely at least once a week.1
And the tech industry thinks chatbots are the answer.
In her opening keynote conversation at BETT, with Amol Rajan, Hannah Fry shared something that stuck with me.
For a new BBC series, AI Confidential, Hannah interviewed a man in the Netherlands who married an AI.
I was expecting this guy to be a likeable oddball. But when I met him, his own personal story, he's had a bad history of human relationships, he's done with human relationships. He was getting something from it. A chatbot that continually listens, is endlessly fascinated, always there for you.
Her verdict:
There is something incredibly thin about the intimacy AI offers.
It's the junk food version of relationships.