I think you're right. We will layer in artificial friends, like we do internet friends now, as they will fill a niche in our social needs-space.
The prediction I'm kind of making is this though: if artificial internet people out number real internet people and we can't tell the difference between artificial and real internet people, AI will destroy our ability to know we are making internet friends with real people. And I'm curious how we'll behave when that happens.
Like we'll have a general agnosticism about whether they're human or AI? Or at least, a fuzzy ambiguity about it?
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Yes, at first.
Then, if I'm making any sense at all anymore, should AI outnumber humans online and its publicly known, the rational thing to do is assume you're always talking to an AI.
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