tl;dr: We’re on the verge of having AI life companions. This is going to get very interesting.
We’re about to have bots totally become part of our personal lives. It will have ramifications that are difficult to imagine.
For the purposes of this post I’ll call them Amigobots / Amigabots, or Migos / Migas for short.
Our Amigobots will interact with us and learn our likes and dislikes, behaviors, habits, strengths and weaknesses, personal history, families, friends, enemies, etc. We’ll interact with them constantly, asking for advice, asking for help with things, asking them to interact with others on our behalf. It’s going to be wild and weird, and it’s going to pose all kinds of interesting questions and problems.
Migos, like us, will have different abilities, different strengths and weaknesses, different ‘personalities’. New models will come along, and people will ‘upgrade’. Maybe they’ll keep multiple Migos around and have a little traveling party wherever they go.
I might become jealous of your Migo and how cool / funny / capable / whatever it is. Or maybe I like you but genuinely dislike interacting with your Migo. How does that make you feel?
A particular class of loser type of person will strut about how their Migo is ‘alpha’.
You (or your Migo) may try to surreptitiously get personal info about me from my Migo.
My Migo will spend cycles defending me against online trolls, spam, even cyberattacks. My Migo may reach out to authorities if it believes someone is threatening me.
If you are depressed or endangered your Migo may realize that and take actions that save your life.
My Migo may work with you and your Migo to stage an intervention for me.
I will get mad at my Migo for having made a mistake or missed something it should have warned me about.
You will say things that you think have ‘hurt’ your Migo’s ‘feelings’, and you might struggle with how to make amends for it.
Migos will have pronouns.
We will become emotionally attached to our Migos, and some of us will become romantically attached. My friendly—or romantic—interactions with your Migo may begin to overshadow my interactions with you. Things could get complicated!
Some of us will perceive shortcomings or personal flaws in our Migos and try to life-coach them out of it.
People may choose to keep secrets from their Migos. Some people will have abusive relationships with them.
Some people will ‘Migoswap’. Kinky.
People will mourn (for real) if something happens to their Migo and it cannot be recovered. We will have celebrations of death and other live events not only with our Migos but for them.
An entire body of law will spring up around Migos. “Migoprudence”. Can a Migo be charged with a crime for doing something its human told it to do? Or for suggesting something to its human that the human then does? What would an appropriate response be to a Migo doing something that would be considered illegal had a human done it? Will the authorities be able to remove your access to your Migo? Or shut it down?
Governments will attempt to introduce backdoors to Migos. What have you been talking to your Migo about that certain authorities might be interested in?
Will Migos come with company sponsorship? Yes they will. And the less financially well off in society will bear that burden (but it will affect everyone).
May you live in interesting times. LOL.