Latest news with #marriage
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
ChatGPT is making us weird
Artificial intelligence chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT models are changing the way we think. Beyond our workflows and creative processes, the bots are disrupting our social cues and intimate lives. Business Insider spoke to a range of professionals to ask: Is ChatGPT making us weird? The other day, my family group chat lit up when I posed a question about whether it's important to say "please" and "thank you" to ChatGPT when asking it to conduct a niche search or plan out an itinerary. My mother, ever a stickler for manners, said she makes a conscious choice to behave in this way. A choice she said she makes to "keep myself human." Another loved one later admitted she's been leaning on the chatbot for guidance as she navigates a tricky moment in her marriage. And I couldn't resist my temptation to ask ChatGPT to evaluate how attractive I am after The Washington Post reported that people were asking it for beauty advice. (It said I have "strong, expressive features," then told me to stand up straighter and smile more.) But I know it's not just my immediate circle: ChatGPT is making everyone behave a little strange. As large language models become fixtures of our digital lives, the ways we engage with them reveal a society in flux, where machines aren't only mimicking human interaction but quietly altering the expectations and norms that govern it. Business Insider spoke with four professionals who interact with chatbots like OpenAI's GPT models in radically different ways — a sociologist, a psychologist, a digital etiquette coach, and a sex therapist — to explore how the rise of AI is changing how we see each other, how we view ourselves, as well as how it's disrupting our manners and intimate lives. The conversations centered on ChatGPT, since OpenAI's chatbot is quickly becoming the AI world's equivalent of what Google is to search engines, but the professionals said similar conclusions could be drawn for Meta AI, Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic's Claude, or any other large language model on the market today. Digital etiquette consultant and author Elaine Swann said that society has needed to adapt to new social cues as each wave of technology has changed our lives. While we've largely collectively agreed that it's all right to use shorthand in personal email correspondence and rude to take a cellphone call on speakerphone in public, we're still establishing a social code for how to interact with AI bots and agents. Kelsey Vlamis, a senior reporter at Business Insider, said she's started seeing a chatbot-related change in her personal life. While on vacation in Italy, she said her husband found himself impatient with their tour guide, consciously having to keep himself from interrupting with questions "since that's how he talks to ChatGPT when he is trying to learn something." Of course, he had to hold himself back, Vlamis added, "since that is not, in fact, how we talk to human beings." Since AI has gained momentum, social media is full of posts asking whether it's appropriate for a spouse to use ChatGPT to write a love note to their partner, or for a worker to rely on an AI agent to fill out a job application on their behalf. The jury's still out on situations like these. "AI is certainly smarter now, which is great for us, but at the same time, we have to be very careful that it doesn't substitute basically our judgment or empathy," Swann said. "We have to be careful with it, not just utilizing it as our sole source of information, but also making sure that we put a mirror up to ourselves in how we use it, and running its suggestions by people that we know and care about." Maintaining our baseline levels of respect — not just for each other, but the world around us — is also key, Swann said. After OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X in late April that it costs "tens of millions of dollars" for the company to process niceties like "please" and "thank you" directed toward ChatGPT, she stressed that it's up to the company to make processing those statements more cost-effective, not up to users to stop being polite. "This is the world that we create for ourselves," Swann said. "And AI should also understand that this is how we speak to one another, because we're teaching it to give that back to us." Altman, for his part, said the massive amount of funds used on polite requests toward ChatGPT is money "well spent." Laura Nelson, an associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, said that because the world's most popular chatbots are created by American companies, written by US-based programmers, and trained primarily on content written in the English language, they have deeply entrenched biases that are often seen in Western cultures. "It's really important to keep in mind that it's a particular world view that these algorithms have based their training data on," Nelson said. So if you ask ChatGPT to draw you a picture of a plate of breakfast, it'll conjure typical North American foods: bacon, eggs, sausage, and toast. It describes a bottle of wine as a "classic and thoughtful gift," though in many cultures, alcohol is rarely consumed, and a bottle would make a tone-deaf present. While those examples are relatively harmless, the bots also exacerbate more insidious and potentially damaging biases. A 2021 study published in Psychology & Marketing found that people prefer AI to be anthropomorphized as female in their devices, like it is in most pop culture representations, because it makes the technology seem more human. However, the study found that preference may be inadvertently entrenching the objectification of women. There have also been numerous reports that lonely, mostly male, users may verbally abuse or degrade their AI companions. Business Insider previously reported that artificial intelligence is also rife with discriminatory bias due to the data it's trained on, and ChatGPT in particular showed racial bias when screening résumés for jobs, over-selecting Asian women candidates and under-selecting Black men. While these biases may not immediately change our behavior, they can impact our thinking and the ways we operate as a society, Nelson said. And if ChatGPT or other AI applications are implemented into our decision-making, whether in our personal lives, in the workplace, or at the legal level, it'll have wide-reaching effects we haven't even considered yet. "There's just no question that AI is going to reflect our biases — our collective biases — back to it," Nelson said. "But there are a lot of people interacting with these bots, and we have no data to suggest what the global trends are, or the effects it's going to have long-term. It's a tricky thing to get a handle on." Concrete data about the societal shift caused by AI is hard to come by, but the companies behind the tech know something is happening. Many of them have dedicated teams to figure out what effect their technology has on users, but their publicly available findings aren't peer-reviewed like a typical scientific study would be. OpenAI announced that a recent update to the GPT-4o model had a hiccup. It was "noticeably more sycophantic" than prior models, the company said in a press release. While it passed OpenAI's self-described "vibe check" and safety testing, they rolled it back after realizing its programming to please the user could fuel anger, urge impulsive actions, or reinforce negative emotions "in ways that were not intended." The company's announcement highlighted that OpenAI is keenly aware that the various AI applications gaining momentum online — from digital romantic partners to study buddies to gift-suggesting elves — have also started to have creeping effects on human emotions and behavior. When reached for comment, a spokesperson for OpenAI directed Business Insider to the company's recent statements on sycophancy in GPT-4o and an early study of emotional well-being. OpenAI's research, conducted with users over the age of 18, found that emotional engagement with the chatbot is rare. However, heavy users were more likely to report an emotional connection to the bot, and those who had personal conversations with ChatGPT were more likely to report feelings of loneliness. An Anthropic spokesperson said the company has a dedicated research team, Societal Impacts, which is analyzing Claude usage, how AI is being used across jobs, and studying what values AI models have. Representatives for Meta and Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment. Nick Jacobson, an associate professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth's Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, conducted the first trial study delivering psychotherapy to clinical populations using generative AI. His research found that a carefully programmed chatbot can be a helpful therapeutic tool for people suffering from depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Engagement among patients in the study rivaled that of in-person therapy, they saw a significant reduction in the severity of their symptoms, and, when measured using the same test as human providers, the patients in the study reported they bonded with their therapeutic chatbot with a similar intensity as a human therapist. "Folks were really developing this strong, working bond with their bot," Jacobson said, a factor which is key to a productive therapeutic relationship. However, most bots aren't programmed with the care and precision that Jacobson's was, so those emotional bonds could be developed with an AI that doesn't have the skills to handle their users' emotional needs in a productive way. "Nearly every foundational model will act in ways that are profoundly unsafe to mental health, in various ways, shapes, and forms, at rates that are totally unacceptable," Jacobson said. "But there are so many people that are using them for things like therapy and just plain companionship that it's becoming a real problem — I think folks should handle this with greater care than I think they are." Emma J. Smith, a relationship and sex therapist, said she believes in-person therapy comes with unique benefits that can't be replicated by AI, but she sometimes recommends using chatbots for anxious clients to practice social interactions in a low-stakes environment, "so if it goes badly, or you get stuck, there's no pressure." "But some of the drawbacks are, like anything really, if it becomes a mechanism to avoid human interaction, or if it is taking you away from going out and being in the world," Smith said. "Video games are probably fine for a lot of people, and then there are some people that it takes over, and then they're missing out on their non-virtual life because they're too involved. I can see that that would be a problem with these bots, but because this is so new, we know what we don't know." While the results of his trial were promising, Jacobson warned that the large language model used in his study was carefully trained for years by some of the most prominent scholars in the psychiatric field, unlike most "therapy" bots available online. "This has inherently got a lot more danger than a lot of folks are necessarily aware of," Jacobson said. "There's probably a great deal of good that can happen from this, but there's a great deal we don't know, like for example, when folks are turning to these things for companionship, does that actually enhance their ability to practice in social settings and build human bonds, or do folks actually further withdraw and replace what would be otherwise human relationships with these parasocial relationships with these chatbots?" Jacobson is particularly concerned about AI's impact on developmental processes among younger people who haven't grown up with old-school social norms and habits. While testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee in early May about child safety in the AI era, Altman said he would not want his son to have a best friend bond with an AI bot, adding that children require "a much higher level of protection" than adults using AI tools. "We spent years and years focusing predominantly on safety, so it's very concerning to me how many people are jumping into the AI space in new ways, and just shipping it," Jacobson said. "And in my mind, that's acting quite irresponsibly. You know, a lot of folks in Silicon Valley want to move fast and break things, but in this case, they're not breaking things — they're breaking people." Read the original article on Business Insider
Fox News
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Rebecca St. James and Cubbie Fink: The Making of a True Power Couple
Celebrity marriages come and go… and they do so rather quickly and often. But a true power couple is one where both man and woman, individually, are first devoted to God. So says Grammy Award-winning Christian artist Rebecca St. James and her filmmaker and pop band co-founder Cubbie Fink. Each found success in their careers before they even met, and both held up a godly standard for dating and for potential mates. Now married for 14 years, they have three children and full schedules. In this season of weddings and the hope in a love that lasts forever, St. James and Fink offer advice to couples on what gives a marriage the power to succeed. On this episode of Lighthouse Faith, the couple talks about their new book, 'Lasting Ever: Faith, Music, Family & Being Found By True Love.' The book's title is the giveaway, because the only true love available to the whole of humanity, is the love that survives into eternity, the love of Jesus Christ. Through ups and downs and sickness and health, marriage is a journey that needs Divine Guidance, to give it the best chance to not just survive, but thrive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
Independent Singapore
10 hours ago
- General
- Independent Singapore
Singaporean mum admits feeling unfulfilled despite having a 'family, a house, a car, and a stable job'
SINGAPORE: A Singaporean mum recently shared a raw and honest post on social media, saying that even though she has everything she once wished for—a family, a house, a car, and a stable job—she still feels like something is missing deep down. 'My heart and mind still feel unsatisfied,' she admitted. In a post titled 'Drowning in the Depths: What to Do?', she opened up about the emotional challenges of being a working parent and how this has greatly affected her marriage. 'My relationship with my hubby has deteriorated after having my kid. Most of the time, it feels like we are roommates. Also, his capacity for engagement seems to have gone from bad to worse,' she wrote. 'Like he wasn't the best conversationalist before this, but now it's like there's barely any effort apart from the daily routine conversations. He's a hands-on dad, I guess, but I'm still the one who carries most of the mental load.' The woman also revealed how motherhood has impacted her social life. 'I feel like I have no friends. Even calling to chat or replying to messages seems to take a lot of effort. Whereas I see many others out there having huge gatherings every week. Why is it only me who lost everyone?' She went on to share that they hired a domestic helper to ease the burden at home. However, the arrangement has not been as helpful as she had hoped, as the helper frequently complains about aches, pains, and personal issues, and appears reluctant to take on anything beyond her core duties. 'It's a nuisance. I really, really wish I could somehow make do without one, but it seems impossible for now,' she wrote. 'There are several other things that bother me, but it seems like I should just accept it. The only time I don't feel like I'm drowning in the depths is when I'm with my kid, who's literally the light of my life, and perhaps when I'm at work because I'm too busy and distracted to feel anything,' she added. 'You need to talk to your husband about this…' In the comments, many Singaporean Redditors encouraged the mum to tackle things one step at a time. See also Grace Chan is head over heels with Kevin Cheng's looks Some felt that mending her relationship with her husband could be a good starting point. One Redditor advised, 'Share your thoughts with your husband, but craft the messaging well, such as telling him how you miss the time you had with him alone, being able to converse with him, and share everything under the sun with him.' Another agreed, adding, 'You need to talk to your husband about this; it won't be easy, and it won't be fast, but you will both need to be willing and able to address it.' Others turned their attention to her home situation, suggesting that she address the ongoing tension with her helper. 'Talk to your helper; if she's not happy, change her out. You don't have to deal with substandard service when you're paying for it.' Another shared, 'Feel like we are quite similar in terms of life phase. Except maybe I have two kids now. My helper usually doesn't give problems…if yours is not helping, I might take a leap and suggest you consider replacing her.' In other news, a woman shared on social media that her former boss has been spreading false claims about her after she resigned from a company she believed she had left on good terms. In a detailed post on the r/askSingapore subreddit, the woman explained that she left her job at the end of 2024, having served the standard one-month notice period. At the time of her departure, there were no signs of conflict or tension, and she assumed everything had ended on amicable terms. However, weeks after her departure, troubling rumours began to reach her through former colleagues and people in her professional network. Read more: 'My ex-boss is spreading lies about me' — Woman says her former boss is falsely claiming she 'mismanaged' the company, so he fired her, despite a peaceful resignation Featured image by Depositphotos (for illustration purposes only)
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Cohabiting couples in Worcestershire issued legal warning
COUPLES living together in Worcestershire have been warned about the legal differences between cohabiting and being married. Kate Booth, solicitor and head of family and matrimonial at Brindley Twist Tafft & James (BTTJ), issued the caution as marriage rates in the UK continue to fall. The number of marriages has dropped by 20.8 per cent between 1992 and 2022, with a considerable 61 per cent decrease in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Office for National Statistics data also shows that the proportion of adults married or in a civil partnership has fallen below 50 per cent for the first time in England and Wales. Mrs Booth said: "Covid was clearly a massive factor with many weddings in 2020 and beyond postponed or cancelled. "But there has been a growing acceptance of cohabitation, and other forms of partnership, leading some couples to choose not to marry." She added that economic instability and the costs of getting married had also contributed to the decline in couples getting married. "However, it is vitally important that cohabiting couples understand their rights and entitlements – which can be precious few," she said. Mrs Booth pointed out that couples who buy properties together may not have both names on the Land Registry if they originally moved into one partner's home. She also warned that couples who have a religion-only ceremony, with no official civil ceremony, may be considered as simply cohabiting in the eyes of the law. For those who opt for glamorous weddings in far-off settings, she said that their marriages could well be recognised in UK law if a formal, legal marriage ceremony took place in the chosen country. If couples decide to separate and divorce, she said, it raises considerable issues where there was no formal marriage ceremony. Mrs Booth said: "Some people opt for quick online divorces, but this does not address financial issues or questions over the arrangements for children, for example." She advised couples who choose to live together rather than formally marry to consider jointly signing a cohabitation agreement from the outset.
Irish Times
12 hours ago
- General
- Irish Times
‘Should I tell my wife that I'm a crossdresser after more than 20 years together?'
Dear Roe, Should I tell my wife I'm a crossdresser? I've kept this part of me secret since childhood and through our marriage. I really haven't had much opportunity to explore this part of myself but it has always been there. Over the past year or so, I've bought my own clothes, make-up and wig and taken some time when home alone to dress. More recently I've found some community with other crossdressers online, sharing photos and chatting. I've enjoyed this sense of connection and recognition. My wife and I are happy, we have three beautiful kids, good careers and share interests in the outdoors and travel. Our values and priorities are aligned and we make a good team. We also love each other very much and have been together for more than 20 years. But I'm pretty certain she would reject this side of me – I don't think she would accept me expressing myself through crossdressing, but more so because of the deceit. I should have told her about this – before we married and had kids, and before I took the next step of engaging online. So my dilemma is: do I keep this secret? I don't think I can stop completely, but I've kept it secret for almost 40 years since childhood, so why not for another 40? On the other hand, I know my mental health is suffering from keeping secrets, and if there was acceptance at the other end of what would be a difficult process then I know I would be happier. But at what cost? Do I have the right to shatter my wife's image of me as a good husband, father and partner for something so selfish? Is it possible to stop or even keep it secret indefinitely? I'm worried if speaking this truth will open up a path to something else. I don't know what to do. There's an emotional line running through your letter, underneath the question of whether to tell your wife about your crossdressing. It's something deeper, more painful: the fear that doing so will collapse the image she holds of you. You're afraid that being honest will somehow undo your role as a good husband, father, or man. Let's be very clear: it doesn't. This part of you doesn't cancel the rest of you. You are still good, still worthy, still lovable, still the same devoted partner and parent. That remains true, whatever comes next. READ MORE You carry guilt for not telling her sooner – before marriage, children, private exploration – and that's understandable. But it's also understandable why you didn't. You chose secrecy not out of malice but out of fear, out of shame, out of a cultural world that tells men like you that femininity is weakness and gender play is deviance. Most of us were never given the tools to talk about this stuff in real time. You were trying to protect the life you were building. That doesn't make you malicious, that makes you human. [ 'Why does my husband act like this? An affair I could deal with' Opens in new window ] You also feared that speaking this truth might start something you couldn't control, and that it would lead somewhere unknown. And that's probably true. Opening this door may indeed lead you to learn new things about yourself, your needs, your desires. But those discoveries aren't threats – they're invitations to a deeper, fuller and ultimately more sustainable self. Self-suppression has a cost, and you're already paying it: in mental health, in emotional loneliness, in the wear and tear of hiding. You've lived so much of your life for others. But your needs matter too. To feel truly loved, you have to be fully seen. Let's pause here and say this clearly: crossdressing does not automatically say anything about your sexuality or gender identity. It means wearing clothing typically associated with another gender – something that's been heavily policed for men in particular. People crossdress for many reasons: comfort, play, expression, eroticism, identity, artistry or joy. It doesn't make you any less of a man, or any more of a woman. It simply means you're exploring a side of yourself that deserves compassion and space. Crossdressing challenges an arbitrary gender binary – this rigid system that says men must act one way, dress one way, feel one way, and women another. It's a system that's deeply cultural, not natural, and it harms everyone by limiting how we get to be human. Crossdressing is well overdue destigmatisation. It's kind of pathetic and silly when you break it down. It's just clothes. If our patriarchal society wasn't so deeply threatened by gender fluidity, it wouldn't be an issue. And if the gender binary was really so natural and innate, we wouldn't have to police it to such ridiculous levels. You are not doing something shameful or unnatural, you are stepping into a fuller expression of your humanity. [ 'I got back with my partner after breaking up with him but I am still plagued by doubts' Opens in new window ] The fear that your wife might grieve or recoil isn't irrational. She may feel grief – not necessarily because you crossdress, but because she'll need to reorient her picture of your inner world. That's okay. That's part of real intimacy. None of us stay exactly who we were when we first fell in love. The people we marry will change. Long-term love makes room for evolution. Relationships thrive not by avoiding change but by meeting each other with honesty and care when change happens. You fear ruining her and your children's image of you. But what if, instead of ruining it, you're giving her the gift of knowing you more truly? What if her image of you as a 'good man' becomes even richer – because it now includes courage, vulnerability, complexity and honesty? What if your experience of parenting becomes more meaningful because you're teaching your children how to love and respect everyone around them as they are; teaching them that just like you, their identities and realities deserve love and support; and teaching them that the world and human beings are so much more rich and beautiful and complicated than patriarchy's small, rigid boxes – and that that's gorgeous? If she struggles with the secrecy, explain that you didn't hide this to deceive her, but to protect yourself When you're considering whether to share something this personal with someone you love, especially after so many years of holding it in, it's not just about disclosure – it's about connection. About finally bringing a part of yourself out of the dark in the hope that your relationship can hold it. That kind of truth-telling takes courage, and it also benefits from preparation. Before you talk to your wife, take time to reflect on what crossdressing means to you. Is it private? Creative? Sexual? Do you want her involvement or just her understanding? The clearer you are, the more safely you can guide the conversation. Frame it as an act of trust, not a confession. Something like, 'This has been part of me for a long time, and I've been scared to share it. But I trust you, and I want to be known more fully.' You're not detonating your marriage – you're opening a door to deeper connection. Expect emotion. She may feel confused, hurt, even betrayed, not necessarily because of what you're sharing, but because it's new and unexpected. You've had a lifetime to make peace with this. She hasn't. Give her space, stay present, and don't confuse discomfort with rejection. She may have questions, and it could help to have resources to offer a gentle path to understanding – articles, stories or media that show this is a real, human experience lived by many in healthy, loving relationships. Tell her what's not changing: your love, your role as partner and parent, your commitment to her. That reassurance matters. If she struggles with the secrecy, explain that you didn't hide this to deceive her, but to protect yourself from a world that told you this part of you wasn't acceptable. You're not asking her to bear the burden of that shame – you're asking her to help you put it down. A couples therapist who is informed about gender identity, expression, and nontraditional relationship dynamics can be an invaluable guide. Letting this part of you breathe may feel risky, but it's also a step towards being fully known. That's where deeper love begins. Good luck. .form-group {width:100% !important;}
