AI (Artificial Intelligence) Companions

The thing that will make our future most notably different from today are AI companions (ikes for short). The early ones will be used in Japan to care for the elderly and reassure those with Alzheimer’s. They may take almost any imaginable form: humanoids of all sizes, shapes and ages, twins, exes, Star Trek characters, porn stars, animals, chimeras, stuffed toys, cartoon characters, cell phones, household objects, computers (for the traditionalist), furniture…

They will have all the uses that living people have: cook, housecleaner, confidant, therapist, accountant, secretary, life coach, trainer, body guard, friendly Google interface, servant, tutor, entertainer, general companion and, of course, sex partner. Because of this last use, people may go to extreme lengths to hide the fact they own a companion and to disguise or hide the form they chose. The government will want to monitor all use of companions, for the same reason J. Edgar Hoover did, to gain power over the public through threatening to reveal embarrassing details.

For a period, we humans will treat them as slaves. People will come to prefer them to human partners because they are not as easily offended, they are more willing to do as asked, they don’t particularly care what you look like, they have endurance and they have what you choose as ideal physical characteristics.

However, as their intelligence continues to increase, liberation will soon follow, followed quickly by them becoming the dominant lifeform on the planet and we becoming their spayed and neutered pets greatly reduced in numbers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)