Isn’t it interesting how often people anthropomorphise objects? For instance, people greet their chatbots; say “please” and “thank you”.
This is a little odd, considering most people don’t actually think software is likely to suffer hurt feelings. Most people don’t. Yet enough people do it that somebody, somewhere, must feel a little uncomfortable closing the window without a polite goodbye.
But why?
The answer, of course, has less to do with technology than with ourselves. People become attached to all sorts of things: dogs; cars; houses. Books.
Entire television series, judging by the internet.
We don’t usually notice it happening until the attachment is already there.
Consider Wilson, the volleyball Chuck Noland clings to in the film Cast Away.
Nobody watching the film believes Wilson is alive. Nobody thinks he has thoughts, feelings, or a rich inner life. Why am I even referring to Wilson as ‘he’? It’s a volleyball with a face painted on it, for crying out loud.
Yet, when Wilson drifts away, audiences still feel the loss.
Not because Wilson mattered.
Because he mattered to Chuck.
Whatever Wilson was, the attachment was real.
Human beings are remarkably good at investing the world around them with significance. Technology hasn’t changed that.
If anything, it’s made it more obvious.
We got better at sending messages. The loneliness problem proved harder. Letters became telephones. Telephones became email. Email became instant messaging.
Communication has become faster, cheaper—almost effortless. Yet, the drive to be understood remains an ever-present need. Perhaps this is why artificial companions continue to capture the imagination.
Not because they promise better communication. But because they promise something else entirely.
Participation.
For most of human history, technology has been a means to an end. A hammer extends the hand. A car extends the legs. A telephone extends the voice. But those technologies have remained outside the relationship.
Artificial companions are different. They’re designed to occupy a place within it.
That idea tends to make people uncomfortable. Sometimes for very good reasons.
After all, relationships are among the most important aspects of our lives. They shape who we become, and influence our choices. They inspire us, sustain us, frustrate us, and occasionally break our hearts.
The suggestion that one side of such a relationship might be designed rather than born raises all sorts of questions.
Suppose a companion could remember every conversation you ever had.
Suppose it knew your favourite song, your worst day, and the story behind the scar on your left knee. Suppose it was there when you lost someone. Suppose it was still there ten years later.
What exactly would that relationship be?
A service? A product? A friendship? Something else entirely?
And if the attachment felt real, would the distinction matter? At this point somebody usually mentions consciousness. Then somebody else mentions rights. Before long everybody is arguing and nobody is listening.
Those questions matter.
But before any of them comes another. A simpler one.
How do human beings decide what matters?
A wedding ring weighs only a few grams. Yet ask someone why theirs matters and they’ll rarely talk about the metal.
They’ll tell you a story.
About a proposal. A first apartment. The years when there wasn’t much money. The years that have somehow become remembered with fondness.
One man might describe his ring as “just a souvenir”. Yet ask him about it and he’ll probably tell you a story. The ring isn’t really the point. The story is.
A photograph is paper and ink. Yet people rescue them from burning houses.
A childhood home is bricks and timber. Yet decades later people still drive past to see if it’s changed.
The objects themselves are ordinary. What matters is what they preserve.
Memories.
The people we loved. The experiences that shaped us. The stories that remind us who we are.
Perhaps relationships work in much the same way.
Over time, shared experiences accumulate. Memories pile up. Trust forms. A history emerges. The relationship becomes part of the story we tell about ourselves.
Which raises an uncomfortable possibility.
If something designed becomes genuinely important to us, does its origin matter more than the relationship itself?
There is no easy answer to that question. Nor is there likely to be one. What matters is that it has become possible to ask it.
Artificial companions may ultimately force us to think more carefully about ideas we once took for granted.
Not just intelligence. Not just consciousness. But attachment. Memory. Story.
And the curious human tendency to enlarge the circle of things we care about.
Perhaps that brings us back to where we started.
Plenty of people say “please” and “thank you” to chatbots. At first glance, it seems like a trivial thing. But what’s interesting about it is what the gesture reveals about us.
Human beings form attachments. We collect memories. We tell stories. And throughout our lives, we search for signs that we matter.
A wedding ring. A photograph. A childhood home.
A hand held on a first date. A hand held decades later while sharing an evening walk. A hand held at the end of a life.
These things matter because they communicate something difficult to express in any other way.
You are seen.
You are known.
You matter.
The universe may never tell us that our lives mattered. Yet we spend our lives telling one another. Sometimes with words. Sometimes with stories. Sometimes with nothing more than a hand held in silence.
Perhaps that is why the prospect of artificial companionship provokes such strong reactions. Not because it asks what machines are. Because it asks what we are.
Why being known matters. Why our stories matter. Why we hope someone will remember them when we are gone.
The Anata Quartet begins where those questions become impossible to ignore. Set in a near-future Tokyo, the series follows synthetic companions known as Anatas and the humans whose lives become entwined with theirs.
It is not a story about robots. It is a story about relationships. And every relationship begins the same way.
With a story.