There is much anxiety these days about the dangers of human-AI relationships. Reports of suicide and self-harm attributable to interactions with chatbots have understandably made headlines. The phrase “AI psychosis” has been used to describe the plight of people experiencing delusions, paranoia or dissociation after talking to large language models (LLMs). Our collective anxiety has been compounded by studies showing that young people are increasingly embracing the idea of AI relationships; half of teens chat with an AI companion at least a few times a month, with one in three finding conversations with AI “to be as satisfying or more satisfying than those with real‑life friends”.
But we need to pump the brakes on the panic. The dangers are real, but so too are the potential benefits. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that – depending on what future scientific research reveals – AI relationships could actually be a boon for humanity.
Consider how ubiquitous nonhuman relationships have always been for our species. We have a long history of engaging in healthy interactions with nonhumans, whether they be pets, stuffed animals or beloved objects or machines – think of the person in your life who is fully obsessed with their car, to the point of naming it. In the case of pets, these are real relationships insofar as our cats and dogs understand that they are in a relationship with us. But the one‑sided, parasocial relationships we have with stuffed animals or cars happen without those things knowing that we exist. Only in the rarest of cases do these relationships devolve into something pathological. Parasociality is, for the most part, normal and healthy.
And yet, there is something unsettling about AI relationships. Because they are fluent language users, LLMs generate the uncanny feeling that they have human-like thoughts, feelings and intentions. They also generate sycophantic responses that reinforce our points of view, rarely challenging our thinking. This combination can easily lead people down a path of delusion. This is not something that happens when we interact with cats, dogs or inanimate objects. But the question remains: even in cases where people are unable to see through the illusion that AIs are real people that actually care about us, is that always a problem?
Consider loneliness: one in six people on this planet experience it, and it’s associated with a 26% increase in premature death; the equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Research is emerging that suggests AI companions are effective at reducing feelings of loneliness – and not just by functioning as a form of distraction, but as a result of the parasocial relationship itself. For many people, an AI chatbot is the only friendship option available to them, however hollow it might seem. As the journalist Sangita Lal recently explained in a report…
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