AI and Loneliness

Feel The Joy: AI and Loneliness

“What do you think I should do?” Answering this well means you want to help someone, that you know them and their circumstances, their context, the potential impact of your own advice, and that you feel confident enough to give it. As opposed to searching Google for facts and websites, this used to be the kind of question that only a human could answer.

No more.

Now if you log in to your ChatGPT account (or one of the hundreds of other AI models and characterizations) and tell it enough about yourself – kind of like you would a friend – it can answer the question of what it “thinks” you should do. This type of conversational approach is leading to an exacerbation of the loneliness epidemic: among people who responded to a survey about the leading causes of loneliness in America, 73% selected “technology.”

Large language models (like ChatGPT) are getting better and better at mimicking human interpretation, emotion, and linguistic styles. But like I wrote in my last blog post, the robot cannot give you a hug or co-regulate your nervous system with you. It can approximate affection. It can give advice. It can give you a remarkably cogent 10-point plan exported into a PowerPoint that saves hours at work.

But it can’t understand the fullness of human experience.

Human connection is the only thing that can solve loneliness. Relationships repair what relationships break. Loneliness is complex and difficult, and we all have more and more demands on our time in the never-ending quests for “efficiency” and “productivity.” What if productivity was viewed differently? Not as output for profit, but as input for health? Spending time with others is that input. Eye contact is more thrilling than an AI model could ever dream of being, and it’s also harder.

We continue to dive into our digital bubbles and social media, and now AI is acting like a friend. It can answer what it thinks you should do, but it can’t feel empathic joy when you succeed.

PS – Paul Bloom recently wrote a fantastic article on loneliness and AI in the New Yorker.