A 28-year-old woman with a busy social life spends hours on end talking to her A.I. boyfriend for advice and consolation. And yes, they do have sex.
Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, said people were more willing to share private information with a bot than with a human being. Generative A.I. chatbots, in turn, respond more empathetically than humans do. In a recent study, he found that ChatGPT’s responses were more compassionate than those from crisis line responders, who are experts in empathy. He said that a relationship with an A.I. companion could be beneficial, but that the long-term effects needed to be studied.
“If we become habituated to endless empathy and we downgrade our real friendships, and that’s contributing to loneliness — the very thing we’re trying to solve — that’s a real potential problem,” he said.
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A 10-year-old girl watches YouTube with a friend during their after-school program. An ad pops up. A two-minute quiz can tell her if she has ADHD. She takes it, of course. And just like that, she comes home to talk to her child psychiatrist dad about how she has ADHD.
This story is not unique. Mental health awareness has become one of Canada’s most visible public health projects. The messaging is everywhere: Bell Let’s Talk, school wellness e-mails, workplace campaigns, social media initiatives.
Yet despite these efforts, population-level mental health keeps declining. Medication use is increasing. How can this be?
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