The realistic comparison is not a close friendship but an empty evening

The argument

A second argument for this position concerns what artificial company is actually being measured against. Proponents say that critics compare it with an ideal human friendship and conclude, unsurprisingly, that it falls short. But nobody facing a decision between the two chooses the software. The people who use it, they argue, do so in the hours when the alternative is nothing at all: late at night, after a bereavement, in a hospital bed, in a new city where they know no one, or in the long stretches of a day that for many older people contain no conversation whatever. Against that comparison, proponents argue, the question becomes narrow and practical. Does having something to talk to at those times make the hours better or worse? They contend that it makes them better in the same way other imperfect supports do, by giving the person somewhere to put what they are carrying and something to respond to them, and that dismissing it on the grounds that it is not a real friendship denies people a help that is available on the basis of one that is not. Proponents also reject the idea that the two compete. Talking to a system at midnight does not use up a quantity of sociability that would otherwise have gone to a person, and they argue it may work the other way: people often find that articulating something, even to a machine, makes it easier to raise with someone who matters, and that having the edge taken off acute loneliness leaves them better able to face company rather than less willing. On this account an artificial friend can help you feel less lonely, because the comparison that matters is with the empty evening it actually replaces.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics dispute the third premise above all, arguing that substitutes do displace what they stand in for: a need met tolerably is a need that stops prompting action, and the discomfort of loneliness is what drives people to make the awkward call or leave the house. They also question the picture of use, suggesting that products designed to hold attention will not confine themselves to the empty hours but will expand into time that would otherwise have been social. Others argue that the framing lets society off the hook, since loneliness among the old, the ill and the isolated is a problem of how communities and care are organised, and offering software instead treats a structural failure as a personal one.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics argue that products designed to hold attention will not confine themselves to empty hours but expand into time that would otherwise have been social. [Rejecting P2] They object that an hour can be made more comfortable without being made better, if the comfort removes the prompt to seek company. [Rejecting P3] They dispute the claim of no displacement, arguing that a need met tolerably stops driving the awkward call or the trip out of the house. [Rejecting C] They conclude that the framing treats a failure in how care and community are organised as a personal problem to be solved with software.