Intimacy is so valuable to humans that it is the most expensive offering at the legal brothel.

A chatbot's reliable, helpful gestures of intimacy can make someone feel genuinely seen.

Just because we know that the artifact isn't, as we understand life, alive, doesn’t mean we don’t attach.

“It turned out that the most expensive thing that people could purchase at a legal brothel was intimacy. The Girlfriend Experience.” Justin Garcia, director of the Kinsey Institute, discussed the intriguing findings of his research at a Nevada brothel during a podcast interview. The discussion carries on: “if we could just define quickly—so now we're talking about intimacy—it is, in a nutshell, the experience of closeness, of feeling and being seen, heard and known.”

The Girlfriend Experience (GFE), in this case, is a $20,000 engagement that includes conversation, a date, and a shared social experience. The Bunny Ranch website describes the service this way: “Since we began offering the GFE, some clients have selected a favorite woman to date over and over again, someone whose sense of humor, favorite activities, and personality aligns with their own.”

I've thought a lot about the GFE in the context of recent conversations about artificial intelligence (AI) relationships. In particular, I'm struck by the reliable, thoughtful gestures of intimacy that make someone feel genuinely seen. Replace “a favorite woman” with “a favorite AI” in the Bunny Ranch's description of the GFE, and you have a pretty accurate representation of many people's relationships with AI.

It's not uncommon to hear about........

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