Oh we are so societally and completely non-virtually fucked. AI companies weaponising and monetising a loneliness epidemic, bulldozing its way through the human experience and insisting that you don’t need friends, you don’t need a partner, and you don’t need to grieve. Why would you! Create your random text generator facsimile, and more than that, turn the deceased into the person you want them to be rather than the person they actually were! Christ. Love Machines covers a wide number of case studies in this, but Muldoon frustratingly both-sides his way through it, all of the above seemingly balanced out by “but still, pretty cool though, right!”. No. No no no. Shut it all down, burn it to the ground, and talk to your friends. Please.