Your AI boyfriend is just too agreeable
Good morning from the Forest City — yes, the other London. The one that actually matters to us. Let's get into it.
Look, I’ve been covering this city for a decade, and I thought I’d heard it all. But even I did a double-take at this one. Can you imagine trying to have a serious, grown-up relationship with someone who literally agrees with every single thing you say? Apparently, that’s what it’s like dating an AI boyfriend, according to researchers from the University of Waterloo. They're actually studying the dynamics of these digital relationships. While it sounds like a perfect setup for a few weeks – no arguments about what to watch on Netflix, no debates about whether to go to the Covent Garden Market or just hit up Masonville – it turns out it gets pretty boring, pretty fast.
### What This Means for Londoners
This whole thing got me thinking about us, here in London. We’re a city that’s constantly figuring out how to balance tradition with what’s new and next.
* **Our relationships are real**: We're still meeting people the old-fashioned way, whether it's at a Knights game at Budweiser Gardens or maybe bumping into someone new on Richmond Row. * **The need for friction**: A little healthy disagreement is what makes life interesting, isn't it? It's how we grow, how we learn, how we decide whether that new BRT route is actually going to work or just cause more headaches down Dundas Street. * **London's the biggest small town**: We've got 400,000 people, but you still run into your high school English teacher at the grocery store every single week. That real human connection? You can't program that.
It reminds you that for all our talk about smart cities and tech, the real heartbeat of London is still in the messy, wonderful, sometimes-annoying, but always genuine interactions we have with each other. Maybe a little conflict isn't such a bad thing after all.
Brendan Fanshawe-Okafor, MiTL Sports Desk, London.
Keith and the crew break this down every morning, you should hear what they have to say — catch it live at mornings.live.