#121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion

Eugenia Kuyda co-founder of Replika, an AI companion. Please check out our sponsors to get a discount and to support this podcast:
– Dollar Shave Club: https://dollarshaveclub.com/lex
– DoorDash: download app & use code LEX
– Cash App: download app & use code “LexPodcast”

Episode links:
Eugenia’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/ekuyda
Replika’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/myreplika
Replika’s Website: https://replika.ai

If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/podcast or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.

Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

OUTLINE:
00:00 – Introduction
06:18 – Loneliness
13:54 – Can AI alleviate loneliness?
18:13 – Love
20:49 – Russia in the 1990’s
31:47 – Chernobyl
41:35 – Communism
49:21 – Losing a friend
57:55 – Mortality
1:10:41 – Replika origin story
1:59:37 – Bringing people back to life with AI
2:05:37 – Relationship with Replika
2:18:27 – Can you form a connection with text alone?
2:27:45 – Does an AI companion need a body?
2:30:20 – Her
2:37:24 – GPT-3 for conversation
2:43:48 – We should be nice to AI
2:46:52 – Book recommendations
2:53:45 – Russian language
2:58:41 – Meaning of life