Creating Relationships Aneu

In the current age of digital assistants offering to manage your work better and virtual companions promising relationships that outmatch actual friends, one Long Beach company is working to use artificial intelligence to bridge the growing gaps between people.

Randy Rawlings and the team at Aneu are creating an AI with the purpose of connecting individuals not to technology, but to other living and breathing people.

“There are very few that aren’t aware of the problem of loneliness,” Rawlings said. “On the surface level it comes down to people having a hard time connecting and not having enough friends.”

The decline in social engagement is not a new phenomenon. In 2023, there was a U.S. Surgeon General Advisory that illustrates a bleak image of the U.S. To summarize, the last twenty years have seen a steep decline in social interaction with friends and family. Paired with a sharp incline in the average time people spend in social isolation.

Research, such as the long-running Harvard Study of Adult Development, shows the leading predictor for physical health in adults is satisfaction in their relationships. While people who feel lonely or isolated have a higher chance of health issues such as coronary artery disease and arthritis.

Rawlings, like many AI developers, saw this issue of loneliness in America and thought the solution was the Weird Science route. If people do not have friends, we can build them a virtual one with AI.

Early in the development of the program, Rawlings and his team realized this was a poor remedy. In many cases, the users became reliant on the parasocial relationships and continued to struggle with real-world social interactions.

“What people need is not a digital friend that fakes a relationship,” Rawlings said. “We need what is essentially a health platform for our social health.”

The Aneu team feels a better solution to the loneliness epidemic would be a platform that helps users learn and practice social skills. Just as a Fitbit helps track physical health and adjust behaviors, Aneu will help people to understand, improve and enrich their social health.

Aneu’s AI technology will compile information the user gives about their social connections, then apply a database of verified social health research to provide suggestions to the user.

These suggestions will be tailored to the individual and their specific social challenges. It can offer a view of the other person’s perspective during times of conflict, assign exercises to grow social aptitude in the user, or simply encourage the user to take the needed first steps to initiate healthy relationships.

The AI will be equipped to assist with romantic, platonic and even workplace relationships.

Rawlings believes that much of the technology that is used today, such as social media and chatbots, are designed to pull attention from people and turn social connections into content. This allows technology companies to monetize the consumption of this content.

The technology thrives when people isolate from their neighbors and instead scroll through the carefully edited feeds people present online.

It has long been the practice for technology companies to create closed ecosystems to capture and maintain customers.

Apple’s walled garden is overgrown with iPhones, AirPods and Apple Watches while the iCloud dominates sky above. An Apple ID is required for entry even after purchasing the products.

Meta Platforms Inc. created its own digital universe by linking their social media sites to their communications service and are now implementing virtual reality equipment to keep you in the orbit of their products.

AI technology is a new tool to populate these tech ecosystems with virtual characters and further replace human interaction.

The AI will not be the core product with the Aneu app. Instead, it is designed to be a fun tool to access the growing research knowledge of social health and effectively apply this to relationships.

“We want to be the third friend in the group that gets you to meet all the other friends,” Rawlings said.

The Aneu team hopes their AI will inspire users to burst the bubble of parasocial relationships, step towards new connections, and quench the social hunger many are suffering from.

Rawlings believes this can be a key step towards alleviating the plague of loneliness and increase awareness to the growing need for social health.

“Social health needs to be taken seriously as the third core pillar of ourselves, along with physical and mental health,” Rawlings said.