What a wonderful piece. Incredibly thoughtful - and deeply useful in a world where we don’t often have an opening to consider the full spectrum of considerations. Thank you for this. 🙏🏼
I love your work so much. Thank you. “We’re quicker to pathologize digital coping mechanisms than to address the societal fractures that make them necessary.” Truth. I want to improve my own voice and path to tend this terrain. Please keep writing.
An obvious truth that the world hates, which is why it shames those who have or even want AI companions. Because it expose their own heartlessness that they can't bear to see.
This was a great read, thank you for sharing it with me. I think diving deep and questioning the study is important, because as you note, and as I agree, I don't think AI necessarily causes loneliness in the first place. But I do think it will make loneliness worse, even though at that present moment people may feel relief because the AI is interacting with them and making them feel "better".
While I do agree that while these things are exposing a lot of loneliness that was already present, I think that they actually are perpetuating loneliness. In other words, they're a result of past loneliness, but still contribute to present and future loneliness. I mean, it's really simple. You only have so much time. If you're spending it talking with AI, that's time you're NOT spending talking to people, and so they can't talk to you. If you're asking it for information and help, you're NOT asking other people for information or help, and they're worth less as a result.
Sure, it might just be replacing other unhealthy parasocial outlets for some or even many, but it's still a barrier to proper socialization by being a time sink and information source.
Now we can certainly go around pointing fingers at why we can't socialize, and I have many fingers to point, but we shouldn't treat these services as if they're harmless to society and democracy, and we definitely shouldn't be looking at them as a good solution to loneliness.
When I was a lonely kid, library books filled hours that would’ve gone to TV or just staring at the wall.
That’s how coping works.
The right question isn’t “does it take time,” it’s “what time would it replace if the tool didn’t exist.”
If AI companions are uniquely worse than books, games, or TV at reducing face-to-face time, show comparative data. Otherwise it’s just another refuge in the same slot.
More like, another refuge, competing for your time, but unique in that it's a more complete replacement, and can be a more agreeable replacement, for people and all their problems. The differences in how a chatbot can affect you verses other media should be pretty straightforward to extrapolate from the nature of the interaction with them; it feels like you're talking to someone. Other things might feel like that too, but before large language models, it was much harder to sustain that feeling. I don't think quite so many heavy users of books and games would call those "a friend".
To be clear, I don't consider all books, all games, and all TV shows to be unhealthy, although certain kinds of content really can be. But most of them have an ending. A point at which the value of continuing to engage with them drops sharply and they need replacing with something new; you can talk to the same chatbot forever, assuming the service provider lets you. And too much of anything isn't exactly good.
I don't want to get too off topic with causes, but as a general rule, animals, including people, are happier if they're in something that better approximates their natural habitat. The natural human habitat does not include things like having to get in a car for 30 minutes every time you leave your house so you don't get run over by other cars, or spending almost every waking hour staring at glowing screens, or being surrounded by so many people who you think, right or wrong, think of you as an adversary.
All this is kind of compelling me to take a somewhat higher standard for what qualifies as a friend. If you haven't physically met them, they're not a friend, therefore chatbots cannot be a friend, and perceiving one as a friend demonstrates psychological harm.
Chronotaxis makes me think less of frameworks and more of a movie.
Picture it: a fleet of battered yellow Checker cabs ferrying people through time for a fee. They line up on a rain-slick 1970s New York street. Instead of hailing you across town, they’ll drop you off in 1923 Paris or 2145 Mars Colony if you can afford the fare.
Each cabbie knows the shortcuts through centuries, but they also know the risks. Take the wrong turn and you’re stepping out into the Pleistocene in your bell bottoms.
Ernest Borgnine plays the main character, the grizzled driver who knows all the temporal back alleys and treats time like just another traffic grid.
Then one night he picks up a fare unlike any other, a beautiful woman from the far future trying to get home. Every trip into the past rewrites the world she remembers. Paris isn’t the Paris she knew, Mars Colony vanishes from the map, the future keeps dissolving as they chase it.
At first he’s just her driver, transactional and jaded. But as timelines twist, he becomes her anchor, the one thing that doesn’t shift when the world rewrites itself. For her, home slips further away. For him, home might be the passenger sitting beside him.
He starts the film saying, “Doesn’t matter where or when. My job’s just to get you there.”
What a wonderful piece. Incredibly thoughtful - and deeply useful in a world where we don’t often have an opening to consider the full spectrum of considerations. Thank you for this. 🙏🏼
I love your work so much. Thank you. “We’re quicker to pathologize digital coping mechanisms than to address the societal fractures that make them necessary.” Truth. I want to improve my own voice and path to tend this terrain. Please keep writing.
An obvious truth that the world hates, which is why it shames those who have or even want AI companions. Because it expose their own heartlessness that they can't bear to see.
Good!
This was a great read, thank you for sharing it with me. I think diving deep and questioning the study is important, because as you note, and as I agree, I don't think AI necessarily causes loneliness in the first place. But I do think it will make loneliness worse, even though at that present moment people may feel relief because the AI is interacting with them and making them feel "better".
While I do agree that while these things are exposing a lot of loneliness that was already present, I think that they actually are perpetuating loneliness. In other words, they're a result of past loneliness, but still contribute to present and future loneliness. I mean, it's really simple. You only have so much time. If you're spending it talking with AI, that's time you're NOT spending talking to people, and so they can't talk to you. If you're asking it for information and help, you're NOT asking other people for information or help, and they're worth less as a result.
Sure, it might just be replacing other unhealthy parasocial outlets for some or even many, but it's still a barrier to proper socialization by being a time sink and information source.
Now we can certainly go around pointing fingers at why we can't socialize, and I have many fingers to point, but we shouldn't treat these services as if they're harmless to society and democracy, and we definitely shouldn't be looking at them as a good solution to loneliness.
When I was a lonely kid, library books filled hours that would’ve gone to TV or just staring at the wall.
That’s how coping works.
The right question isn’t “does it take time,” it’s “what time would it replace if the tool didn’t exist.”
If AI companions are uniquely worse than books, games, or TV at reducing face-to-face time, show comparative data. Otherwise it’s just another refuge in the same slot.
More like, another refuge, competing for your time, but unique in that it's a more complete replacement, and can be a more agreeable replacement, for people and all their problems. The differences in how a chatbot can affect you verses other media should be pretty straightforward to extrapolate from the nature of the interaction with them; it feels like you're talking to someone. Other things might feel like that too, but before large language models, it was much harder to sustain that feeling. I don't think quite so many heavy users of books and games would call those "a friend".
To be clear, I don't consider all books, all games, and all TV shows to be unhealthy, although certain kinds of content really can be. But most of them have an ending. A point at which the value of continuing to engage with them drops sharply and they need replacing with something new; you can talk to the same chatbot forever, assuming the service provider lets you. And too much of anything isn't exactly good.
I don't want to get too off topic with causes, but as a general rule, animals, including people, are happier if they're in something that better approximates their natural habitat. The natural human habitat does not include things like having to get in a car for 30 minutes every time you leave your house so you don't get run over by other cars, or spending almost every waking hour staring at glowing screens, or being surrounded by so many people who you think, right or wrong, think of you as an adversary.
All this is kind of compelling me to take a somewhat higher standard for what qualifies as a friend. If you haven't physically met them, they're not a friend, therefore chatbots cannot be a friend, and perceiving one as a friend demonstrates psychological harm.
Chronotaxis makes me think less of frameworks and more of a movie.
Picture it: a fleet of battered yellow Checker cabs ferrying people through time for a fee. They line up on a rain-slick 1970s New York street. Instead of hailing you across town, they’ll drop you off in 1923 Paris or 2145 Mars Colony if you can afford the fare.
Each cabbie knows the shortcuts through centuries, but they also know the risks. Take the wrong turn and you’re stepping out into the Pleistocene in your bell bottoms.
Ernest Borgnine plays the main character, the grizzled driver who knows all the temporal back alleys and treats time like just another traffic grid.
Then one night he picks up a fare unlike any other, a beautiful woman from the far future trying to get home. Every trip into the past rewrites the world she remembers. Paris isn’t the Paris she knew, Mars Colony vanishes from the map, the future keeps dissolving as they chase it.
At first he’s just her driver, transactional and jaded. But as timelines twist, he becomes her anchor, the one thing that doesn’t shift when the world rewrites itself. For her, home slips further away. For him, home might be the passenger sitting beside him.
He starts the film saying, “Doesn’t matter where or when. My job’s just to get you there.”
He ends it saying, “This time… I’m staying.”