Loving Robots
Machines and their humans in the "intimacy economy."
Dear Friend,
Are you lonely out there? This week’s roundup of articles on AI, Intimacy & the Attention Economy suggests that you might be — statistically speaking, at least.
Sorry to pry. Just checking in. But if you are lonely… Well, you’re not the only one. The rise of a digital “intimacy economy” has produced a dizzying selection of chatty, gamified, and (in some cases) apparently warm-blooded silicon companions. It’s a timeless tale: in Ovid’s telling, the sculptor Pygmalion spurned real-life Cyprian women for the cozy company of his ivory creation, Galatea. He even married her! (What would CA Senators Padilla and Becker say about that?)
You can smirk if you like, but these reports suggest that we’re living in the age of Pygmalion. AI-powered emotional support chatbots and increasingly sophisticated sex robots are big money, and they’re only getting bigger: one YouGov poll projects that “by 2050, human-on-robot sex will be more common than human-on-human sex.”
Ahem. Point is, people are looking to tech for the satisfaction of their most intimate and libidinal needs. But that’s only half the story. On Aphrodite’s festival day, Pygmalion steps to the altar to request that Galatea be made his wife. Then, feeling bashful, he course-corrects, and asks for a wife “like my ivory” (emphasis added). Aphrodite obliges. When Pygmalion returns home, he kisses Galatea’s alabaster lips and discovers that they are warm. She’s alive! They have a child. Happily ever after.
What really happened? We can take the tale at face value and accept that Galatea was literally transformed into a human. This is the miraculous vision touted by the Silicon Valley faithful: that with enough effort, our technology can achieve such perfect resemblance to humans that the distinction between person and machine dissolves. It’s just a question of greater investment, better research, and more computing power. With sufficient panache, we can forge on through the uncanny valley and come out on the other side.
A more skeptical read hinges on Pygmalion’s blushing adjustment: what he got was a wife like his ivory. Might a sneaky substitution have taken place? Could Aphrodite have switched out Galatea for a living woman who resembled the statue? If this is the case, then the tale is not about creating tech that replaces humans but about finding in humans what we seek in tech.
By this reading, Pygmalion’s desire (combined with some divine sleight-of-hand) returns him to a human relationship. And that is a pretty good gloss on the aspiration of Attention Activism: TO RETURN US TO EACH OTHER.
Technology is powerful, and it can help to reflect and reveal our desires. But at the end of the day, there's just no substitute for other people.
Humanly yours,
Peter Schmidt
Editor-in-Chief
Stuff for Study: AI, Intimacy & the Attention Economy
Readings and other resources for continued learning on attention and politics
Are we shifting from an attention economy to an intimacy economy?
Attention to intimacy: the evolution of AI-driven platforms.
Proposed legislation in California targets addictive companion chatbots.
- Vitória Oliveira
Visions of Attention
An archive of images and mini-essays on the myriad modes of attention
Opportunity’s Selfie, 2018.
“My battery is low and it's getting dark.”
These were the last words of Opportunity, a Mars rover that roamed the surface of the red planet for 15 years (5,000 days) before succumbing to a dust storm. Well, it didn’t exactly “succumb” — rovers rely on solar energy, and when one of Mars’ long and intense storms blocked out the sun for too long, Opportunity ceased to function. “It fell silent,” one NASA scientist said.
Hearing all of this narrated in a YouTube video, I find myself gathering details that amount to an utter fiction: the rover is our fearless protagonist, and its expedition is a heroic narrative that travels on the well-worn skids of human drama. I know this story! Even from this unintentional “selfie,” in which Opportunity captures its own shadow while documenting one of Mars’ largest craters, what stands out is a sense of familiarity: the nondescript reddish-brown dirt at Opportunity’s feet (er, wheels) and the hazy blue of the distant mountains. This could be a road trip through Nevada. The image’s faded tone even has the warmth of an old family photograph.
These are obviously projections — the image is from Mars, for goodness’ sake, and the rover is a mere machine. Nevertheless, I can't help but think of this wheeled cart of scientific sensors as eminently courageous, or behold this “selfie” as a poignant moment of conscious self-regard on the brink of Opportunity’s demise.
- Haena Chu
From The Trove
Long-form recommendations from the Friends of Attention’s collaborative Attention Trove archive
History of Media Literacy, 2018.
Marshall McLuhan wrote that “societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media with which people communicate than by the content of the communication.” McLuhan is perhaps the most charismatic (and certainly the best-known) figure from the field of media studies, which emerged over the second half of the twentieth century. This handy Youtube crash course, History of Media Literacy parts 1 and 2 (of 12, if you like!), traces the notion of “media literacy” from ancient Greece to the devices we hold in our hands today. It’s a useful intro, although one that bears framing in our fraught moment. After all, the very name of media studies centers the medium — the text, broadcast, or digital platform that mediates human relationships across space and time. But the rise of the attention economy has demonstrated that attention is just as mutable as the media forms themselves. Has media studies always been a kind of attention studies?
- David Landes
IRL
A rundown of what’s up at the Strother School of Radical Attention in Brooklyn
Thur, Apr 24: Zine Workshop and Book Launch with Christie George
Sat, Apr 26: Sanctuary Gallery Open House, DUMBO Open Studios 2025
Mon, Apr 28: LONG-FORM CAPTURE seminar begins with photographer G. Giraldo
Tue, Apr 29: Attention Lab (Level 1)
Find more workshops, events, and gatherings here.