“If I didn’t socialize with my kids, they wouldn’t become human beings. They wouldn’t know what to do if I was replaced by a wolf.” - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast
“Loneliness is a signal to our body and brains that we don’t like it. It’s telling us to hang out with people who accept us for who we are.” - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast
“We’re the last generation where companionship in the real world is primary. Generation Alpha will likely see digital companionship as the main space, and physical companionship as secondary.” - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast
Jeremy Au and Adriel Yong discuss the transformative impact of AI companions on human relationships, parenting, and societal norms, highlighting how these tools address loneliness by offering hyper-personalized digital companionship but risk displacing genuine interactions. They explore the "barbell effect" in parenting, where AI becomes a cost-effective surrogate for lower-income families while wealthier households invest in immersive, high-touch human experiences. Drawing parallels to processed food's societal role, they caution against over-reliance on AI for emotional and social needs, emphasizing the long-term risks of eroding essential socialization skills. The conversation also touches on generational shifts, with future cohorts like Generation Alpha likely prioritizing digital companionship, and raises ethical and economic concerns about the commodification of relationships and the deepening class divide in access to quality human interaction.
[00:00:00] Jeremy Au: Hey, good morning, Adriel. Good morning, Jeremy. Hope you had fun in Cebu, Geeks on a Beach.
Yeah, it was fantastic. It was my first time at a conference and had a great time. Just I don't know, just talking with a lot of other geeks on a beach. I felt like it described me as a target market perfectly, right?
I'm a geek. I love the beach. Put it together. I think it was like a three day conference effectively. And on the last day right before flying out in the afternoon I was able to get a boat trip from, 7am to about 1pm and visit three islands in Cebu. It was fantastic.
April Ong, thank you so much for helping arrange that. I was like, just like hating my life when I woke up and by then, two hours later, I was like, next to this beautiful ocean. Oh, that's awesome. Like with my goggles and just floating, look at the fish and I think it's nice.
I recommend the conference.
[00:00:49] Adriel Yong: Actually, how different is it having a conference in a more like relaxed setting where everyone's in like shorts and buttoned up suits.
[00:00:57] Jeremy Au: Definitely I think less business, more relational, right? Because people are just talking, bringing their kids, people are talking about the beach.
So I think the less transactional approach, which makes sense. If you're holding a conference in Singapore, people are, are in and out really quick, I, I think there's a faster pace and people's packed back to back, but I think, those relationships, you have to breathe a little bit more.
Because now you can chat for three hours on the boat, you can talk about everything else and then at the end of the boat ride, you're like, okay, let's swap that and get the business, right? So tell me, what stage of the sauna were you at? I know it works out. Yeah. How
[00:01:34] Adriel Yong: about you? How's life for you?
Yeah, no, I've been spending time in Manila as well, I think obviously AI has been a big topic in terms of how agents can potentially replace a lot of service based industries professional services, or BPOs but also on the other hand, you have, AI companions solving the big lonely problem that a lot of adults or even kids are going through and all the ethical complications that come with it.
AI companions. So yeah, excited to just dive a bit deeper into how I guess relationships online have evolved. Back in the day, I'm sure you would have played like games, where, you're playing like random other players from all over the world, all sorts of ages, with all sorts of interesting like relational dynamics.
And then now you're evolved, evolving into AI generated, like relationships and human beings. So how do you feel about that? What was your experience like growing up, playing games with, other players and how do you think about it now with AI Companions?
[00:02:37] Jeremy Au: Yeah, I think this topic for today's discussion, which is AI Companions, and I think there's two parts, right? I think there's companions, right? Which is the solution, , and then there's ai, which is the how, and that'll be the problem which we've implied, which is loneliness or the desire for companionship.
Yeah. When you talk about AI companions it doesn't feel like it's a new thing, right? First of all, people can be lonely, , then people want companionship, and then they feel it digitally and now using ai. And I think for a lot of us who are like millennials and then now dd. I think a lot of people already have digital companions already, right?
Even for myself let me say that again. If we today there are so many games you play and then, you get You know adventuring party, and then there's a female character with a full backstory. There's a male bear, bard, that can explain everything about life and nature.
It's a full, everybody's got their own story as well. And even, back in the day for myself, yeah, I used to be part of these computer games and we didn't have, the fleshed out narration or anything. So it was all other players, right? So they called it these online worlds with other human players.
And so we're all role playing, our characters. And we had companions. This just happened to be a human inhabiting a character that we didn't really know, right? So I still remember playing this game called Utopia. And, I was in secondary school and, we were playing this game where it's like turn based kingdom building game called Utopia.
And In that story, I got married to this lady who was actually in her 20s in America. This was verified because somebody else tried to date her in real life, okay? So it wasn't like, some dude, in the other part of the world. But yeah. I don't think she ever knew that I was a, a minor in Singapore.