The Evolving Landscape of Human-AI Relationships: From Tech Giants to Personal Chatbots

The Download: Introducing the Relationships issue

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Relationships are the stories of people and systems working together. Sometimes by choice. Sometimes for practicality. Sometimes by force. Too often, for purely transactional reasons. That's why we're exploring relationships in this issue. Relationships connect us to one another, but also to the machines, platforms, technologies, and systems that mediate modern life. They're behind the partnerships that make breakthroughs possible, the networks that help ideas spread, and the bonds that build trust -- or at least access. In this issue, you'll find stories about the relationships we forge with each other, with our past, with our children, and with technology itself. Here's just a taste of what you can expect: + People are forming relationships with AI chatbots. Some of these are purely professional, others more complicated. This kind of relationship may be novel now, but it's something we will all take for granted in just a few years. + Adventures in the genetic time machine. Ancient DNA is telling us more and more about humans and environments long past. Could it also help rescue the future? + Frozen embryos are filling storage banks around the world. It's a struggle to know what to do with them. Read the full story. + Our relationships with our employers are often mediated through monitoring systems. And while it's increasing the power imbalance between companies and workers, protections are lagging far behind. Read the full story.

Technology shapes relationships. Relationships shape technology.

Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg all sat shoulder to shoulder, almost as if on display, in front of some of the most important figures of the new administration. They were not the only tech leaders in Washington, DC, that week. Tim Cook, Sam Altman, and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew also put in appearances during the president's first days back in action. These are tycoons who lead trillion-dollar companies, set the direction of entire industries, and shape the lives of billions of people all over the world. They are among the richest and most powerful people who have ever lived. And yet, just like you and me, they need relationships to get things done. In this case, with President Trump. Those tech barons showed up because they need relationships more than personal status, more than access to capital, and sometimes even more than ideas. Some of those same people -- most notably Zuckerberg -- had to make profound breaks with their own pasts in order to forge or preserve a relationship with the incoming president. Relationships are the stories of people and systems working together. Sometimes by choice. Sometimes for practicality. Sometimes by force. Too often, for purely transactional reasons. That's why we're exploring relationships in this issue. Relationships connect us to one another, but also to the machines, platforms, technologies, and systems that mediate modern life. They're behind the partnerships that make breakthroughs possible, the networks that help ideas spread, and the bonds that build trust -- or at least access. In this issue, you'll find stories about the relationships we forge with each other, with our past, with our children (or not-quite-children, as the case may be), and with technology itself. Rhiannon Williams explores the relationships people have formed with AI chatbots. Some of these are purely professional, others more complicated. This kind of relationship may be novel now, but it's something we will all take for granted in just a few years. Also in this issue, Antonio Regalado delves into our relationship with the ecological past and the way ancient DNA is being used not only to learn new truths about who we are and where we came from but also, potentially, to address modern challenges of climate and disease. In an extremely thought-provoking piece, Jessica Hamzelou examines people's relationships with the millions of IVF embryos in storage. Held in cryopreservation tanks around the world, these embryos wait in limbo, in ever growing numbers, as we attempt to answer complicated ethical and legal questions about their existence and preservation.