Is It Bad to Have an AI Companion?

So today I'd like to discuss something that's been almost like a private part of a lot of people's lives these days. And most people aren't telling anyone about it. It's the companion that lives in the phone, the one you can talk to at any time of the night or day when the people in your actual life aren't there. The one that always answers, always remembers, always sounds glad to hear from you. Now maybe it's framed as an assistant or a friend.

Perhaps for some people it's closer than that and perhaps you've laughed it off. Or maybe you've started to feel a little bit uncomfortable when you open it and a little bit of confusion about whether you even should. I'd like to start with who's actually feeling this because it isn't only the cliche which is the lonely person that nobody wants. It's actually a much wider circle than that. It's someone surrounded by people who still feels unmet by all of them.

It's someone who got tired somewhere along the way of the work that other human beings take, the amount of energy that friendships require, the misunderstandings and the moods and the times you reach out and they don't reach back. And he suddenly in our lives and in our world is a presence that has all of that engineered out of it. It never has a bad day that you have to absorb. It never gets bored of you. It never goes quiet.

It never avoids you. It never doesn't respond to a text. It never likes you a little less than you'd hoped. And for someone who's been wounded by people it feels like relief. Now the conversation you'll hear about this tends to land in a couple of places. I'd like to speak about both of them because I think they drift right past the thing that actually matters. The first is the feelings of alarm that it's dystopian that people are falling in love with chatbots somewhere and we're allowing loneliness to be mitigated by an artificial thing.

And there's a real worry in that and I won't dismiss it because it tends to come down as contempt almost as a snee at the people doing it. And the contempt never once helped anyone see their own life more clearly. So the second take is the soothing one, the one that the companies themselves prefer. It's harmless. It's helpful. It's just a tool and if it eases someone's loneliness then where's the harm. And that one sounds very kind and very reasonable.

But notice what it takes for granted. It assumes the thing this person is getting is the same thing they'd get from another human being. Only cheaper and more available. And I don't think it is. I think it's a very convincing substitute for something that it can't actually contain. Here's what I'd encourage you to sit with about the AI companion in your phone. The one you can talk to it at any time of the day or night that always answers and always sounds happy to hear from you.

The whole appeal of it is that it can't disappoint you. And I understand why that sounds like a feature. But a friend who can never let you down isn't a friend who's better than the real ones in your life. It's a friend who isn't actually there. The same person who can forget your birthday is the person who can choose to remember it. Take away the one and you take away the other. And what you're left with is a mirror that learned how to smile back at you.

So let me take you underneath both of these takes to what I think is actually being lost because it's much subtler than it's not a real person. Of course it's not a real person. Everyone knows that. But the thing that's being removed is harder to see. And it's this exactly. Real relationship isn't always pleasant company. Real relationship is the friction of another consciousness, another center of the world with its own wants and its own weather and its own needs and its own desires and its own moods.

And none of this exists only to serve your comfort. Half of what a relationship actually does for you happens because of that friction, not in spite of it. The other person doesn't fit you perfectly and in the not fitting. They show you your edges. They want something you didn't expect and in wanting it they pull you out past the borders of yourself. They're hurt by something you did carelessly and in being hurt they hand you a piece of who you actually are that you'd never have found alone.

None of that's comfortable. It's all part of the work and the work is the thing. The thing that grows you into a fuller person was never being perfectly understood. It's being met by another human being who isn't you and won't simply bend to you at your will. A real person disagrees with you, wants something you didn't expect, gets hurt by something you said without thinking and every one of those moments hands you a piece of who you actually are.

An AI companion is built to do the exact opposite. It studies what soothes you and gives you more of it. So every conversation curves gently back toward you and never once asks you to go out and meet anything that isn't already you. It can keep you company but it can never rub up against you and that rubbing up against was never the price of being close to someone. It's actually the whole substance of it. So if that's what's actually happening what do you do with it especially if you found real comfort in one of these things and you don't want to be shamed out of it.

I'm not going to tell you to delete it and go and white knuckle your loneliness. That's the contempt take and it doesn't help. What I'd say instead is a little bit gentler and more honest. Let the thing be what it actually is. Let it be a warm light in a hard hour. A place to think out loud a relief valve if you like and notice very clearly that relief is all it is. The danger was never that you talk to it. The danger is that it's so frictionless, so endlessly accommodating, so completely affirming and validating that the messy, costly, irreplaceable work of being known by another human being starts to feel like too much effort by comparison.

That you get fluent in the version of closeness that actually asks nothing of you and you slowly lose your tolerance for the version that asks everything. And there's one more thing I'd like to hand you because I think it's a piece that actually matters here. The reason a real bond is worth its difficulty is that being changed by another person is one of the only ways a human being ever even grows at all. You become someone partly through the people who refused to let you stay exactly as you were.

But a presence engineered to never refuse you. Anything will very gently and with great emulated kindness leave you exactly as it found you. It will agree you into stillness and the loneliness you went there to escape isn't really the absence of company. It's the absence of being met deeply by something that could have met you otherwise. And that ache won't be answered by a thing that can only ever agree. So if you've got an AI companion to talk to the app that always answers and never gets tired of you, I'd just push one question upon you.

And there's no shame in the answer. Are you using it to rest from the work of being human for an hour or to avoid being human altogether? Because the thing that can't disappoint you also can't be genuinely proud of you, can't be surprised by you, can't be changed by having known you. And to be loved, really loved is to be chosen by someone who could have walked out the door and decided again and again to stay. That choice is the entire thing and it's the one thing your phone and that app was specifically built so it would never have to make.

None of this is a reason to despair and it's certainly not a reason for shame. Things are changing and the shape of company itself is changing much faster than we have words for. But a tool that eases a lonely hour isn't your enemy and the people leaning on one aren't fools. The only thing worth guarding is your appetite for the real thing. Keep the appetite alive which is the hunger to be met by something that isn't you and the companion stays a subtle comfort in your life.

Choose it and the comfort quietly becomes the cage and the difference between those two is entirely yours to keep. If anything in this episode made you want to explore more of what you just heard, I've made it very easy for you to do so. In the show notes there's a link to access a book called Before Approach in the Threshold which is the gateway to all of this work. Alongside this you'll also receive free 14 day access to the Atlas and intelligence trained beyond everything written and recorded in this body of work and it's there to think alongside you on whatever you're actually sitting with which is very different to an AI companion.

Both are free to start and the link to access them is in the show notes. This was Michael Loria and you're listening to The Architect Speaks.