Join Schwartz Reisman postdoctoral fellow Benjamin Wald as he facilitates a biweekly discussion of issues in AI by using fiction—films, TV shows, short stories—to deepen our ability to imagine possible futures that already confront us, and envision the impacts of artificial intelligence.

In this session, we discuss “I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now my parents think we’re getting married,” a fiction story about artificial romance by Fonda Lee. In Lee’s story, a young man who wants a fake girlfriend to get his parents off his back finds the fake relationship has consequences he hadn’t anticipated. We will examine the consequences that result when chatbots become good enough to turn to for our emotional needs, and even for relationships.