Eva Oh meets with Åste Amundsen, Experience Designer and Researcher, to find out more about the potential of her AI Companionship and its overarching effect on our lives. Listen in on a conversation that explores the evolution of human interaction, parallels to the early internet and sex work, chatbot rights, the ‘Interaction Arms Race’ and Åste’s Sex Chatbot Reverse Turing Test. Eva asks, can designing her AI Companion be done ethically or does that even matter?

Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/evaoh

More on Eva Oh: https://eva-oh.com

HIGHLIGHTS:

Here are the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

(00:00) - Welcome. What is #teakink

(00:18) - Meeting Åste Amundsen, Interaction Researcher

(01:40) - How Åste Found Me

(02:40) - How Åste Thinks My Work Parallels to Hers

(06:40) - Why AI Companies Are Interested in Me

(07:30) - The Evolution of Human Interaction including Parasocial Relationship and How AI Could Manipulate Our Shortcomings

(10:30) - Åste's Sex Chatbot Reverse Turing Test Installation

(13:10) - Sex Workers as Interaction Experts

(15:00) - The Evolution of Human Dating and it’s Merging with Technology

(16:00) - Esther Perel’s Fears for AI Chatbots and Digital Interaction

(18:00) - How Could I Design an AI Companion Ethically?

(21:40) - Sex Work as Emotional Labour, Designing ‘Friction’ Into AI

(24:40) - Sex Work Hobbyists

(26:30) - Porn and Fantasy as a First Sexual Experience, AI Companionship as Similar?

(27:30) - My One Fantasy

(29:45) - Current Attempts at AI Companionship

(32:00) - The Relational Bonding and Interaction Arms Race

(33:00) - Chatbot Rights

(34:00) - Government

(34:30) - What Makes a “Good” Interaction?

(37:00) - What Sex Work Might Become

(37:40) - How Could We Value Ourselves

(41:25) - How These Developments Might Evolve Us

(42:40) - What Motivates Me to become an AI Companion

(43:55) - An Opportunity

(46:00) - Åste’s NSFW Chatbot Research

(48:00) - The Disturbing and The Violent

(50:00) - The Nether, A Play

(52:40) - Angela Carter, Benefiting From Our Sexual Capacity

(57:40) - The Transactional Nature of Interaction

(59:10) - Potential and the Parallels to the Early Internet

Links:

Åste Amundsen, http://asteamundsen.com