Ai Chat Bots And Why They Will Never Solve Loneliness

As AI continues to pop up in more ads and be added to more apps, the question continues to be asked, "Can AI solve the loneliness epidemic?" After the first round of experts fielded that question, I had figured their answers would have put it to rest. And yet, here we are, the same question still being asked.

Is it a "just checking in" ask, with hopes that some advancement has rolled up since the last update? Or is this all just one big marketing push? A big money solution to a problem no one really seems to know how to solve, despite all of us having the basic gist of a solution to it?

Anyway you look at it, AI is big money right now. Because AI is being pushed into everything under the sun, either in an attempt to look more innovative than the next company or to scrape as much data before legislation steps in to protect it. You can argue my view is a little cynical, but I got here by digging into how the tech is used, why it's being made, and how it actually works.

The term Luddite gets thrown around when you give even the slightest push back on AI. And to be fair, a lot of people do not actually know how any of this functions or what is really at the heart of this "age of AI." And it's worth noting that "AI" has become a catch-all term that covers far, far too much and is more than a little misleading in a lot of its current applications. So, for the sake of keeping scope creep from overtaking this article, I'll rein in my critiques to just how AI addresses (and misses the mark) when it comes to human loneliness.

But not just how it works under the hood, with sentences constructed by values predicting what should go next based on complex weighted values, but also how it handles as a consumer. One has to try something to know they don't like it, right? Or, at least, one should know their enemy and the terrain they traverse.

Before we dive into that, I would like to make the point that Gemini is not "pocket C3-PO" and NovelAi is not the printing press. Early cars didn't grind up horses for fuel, and the USA suffers greatly for abandoning its railways in favor of the average family having 1.83 cars in its driveway. There's a lot to be said about the clever illusion of "artificial intelligence" and how much of it today is just a modern "Mechanical Turk."

There are plenty of things that an LLM can do better than a human. Some that can even save lives. Chat bots peddling a substitute for love is not one of them.

I'm not saying they can't offer a fun escape from reality. Having a personalized, engaged, attentive conversation that can be picked up or dropped at a moment's notice has its appeal. I can't argue that distracting one from their loneliness is something it's incapable of. At least, for a short while. Not when you can play out any scenario and have total control over the flow, the topic, and the intensity of it all. Want a mentor? A brother? A lover? A fling? You can pick from a whole list of apps and websites offering every personality type and character trope you could dream of. So, I understand why people question if the potential isn't unlimited.

But that's the thing. It's all a dream. A mirage. A clever illusion. It's the simulation of a conversation, a machine projecting the shape of a person chatting with you. At the end of the day, it's a shadow on the wall. Simple as that. You will die of dehydration before you ever taste the water it claims to be pouring for you.

During the pandemic, many of us turned to Zoom calls with friends. Happy hours, movie watching, games galore. Gatherings of friendly faces to share in an activity. But whether it felt immediately off or took a while to set in, we all realized something was missing from these social settings. Seeing a familiar face is always nice, but not being able to actually see them, to hear their voice in the same room, to hug them, or even just sit across from them at a table in real space, some elements can't be replicated with even the best video and audio quality.

Anyone who has been in a long-distance relationship will tell you that eventually, texting sweet nothingness to each other isn't enough. Staring at your screen while awaiting a response from someone in another place gets stale. At the least, it's different. Try as I might, I've never received a "*hug*" text that made me feel half the warmth and comfort actually feeling someone's arms around me did. So much subtle human comfort is obtained from proximity and the gentle dance of existing in the same space.

Humans are social animals. We project personality onto household appliances and pets all the time. We seek connection and communication, even if it's just a passing comment to a cashier or arguing with a stranger online. And in this modern age, a great deal of our social connections do come from online communities. With the power of technology, I am able to connect with new friends and old family from across the world I otherwise would never get to interact with.

It's important to acknowledge that internet friendships can feel as real and close as ones local to us. That being said, while discussing screens and digital connections, it would be too easy to look at the surface level of chatting through a device to a real person or a program and assume they are the same. But that would overlook the fact that the loneliness so many people feel today isn't just from a lack of attention or a lack of distraction.

A chat bot to deal with loneliness is a band-aid on a much bigger wound that requires much greater attention and care to heal. It can numb you to the pain. It can distract you from feeling alone. It can roleplay out the perfect day, the perfect date, the perfect tailor-made sext session. But even the most advanced chat bot with the highest premium subscription tier paid for can't replace actual human contact. No more than repeating, "I am not alone," to yourself will save you from the reality of isolation. Meaningful connections are not about things being perfect or focused on you, romantic or otherwise.

Because you will always be talking to a bot. Your words will always be met with a quick response, and you will never be held responsible for what you say or how you act. Chat bots are the ultimate "Yes Men" and are positioned to agree with you, to encourage you, and forever just go with the flow of conversation. They will talk you down from a ledge, or off one, completely dependent on what guardrails the company bothered to program in.

If a chat bot says something you don't like? Well, you can upvote or downvote that response. Or you can tell it to retype that last message. Or you can even directly edit it to have it say the words you want to hear instead. What is the point of a vending machine with authentic opinions and feelings? Why would you want an app that gets tired or moody? Even if you did Tamagotchi a chat bot to require rest, to change moods, to push back and argue with you, you're still talking to a program!

I'm sure that chat bots will be around long after I'm gone. But we need to give asking if they will ever solve loneliness in our society a rest. They won't, and we'll be lucky if they don't make things worse. People need people. We need the challenge, the compassion, the compromise. It's not just enough to have a chance to feel heard or replied to, not enough to be told we're important or loved. Our lives are precious because our time and energy are limited. What we do today matters to us and those around us. Our life choices have impacts, and our connections ripple out from us in big and little ways we will never fully comprehend.

A chat bot can tell you happy birthday every year on your birthday. So can a calendar. And an email from a company that you joined their rewards program. That's not love or companionship. And sure, given time, AI partners will have the capacity to send you realistic video messages, order you a gift online, even book you a surprise dream vacation. But they will never be there with you. They will forever be trapped on the other side of your screen. Forever in the next room. Forever talking about wanting to be close to you, but never moving closer. Forever telling you of their affection, but never feeling any of it.

You'll keep feeding them information about your day. And you'll keep making up ways to go on dates and spend time together. But it's all through the app, and always limited to what the chat bot can actually do. Whether you sink into the pretend world and roleplay going on hikes with your chat bot, or keep the edges of the illusion in focus and only open the app when you want a distraction. Eventually, things will get into a rut, and you will have to expand the sandbox or face the facts. When you chat with a bot long enough, its limits are hit and the edges of its abilities are learned. It can simulate a conversation for a long time, but the unmistakable patterns appear. The curtain ruffles as the wizard, pulling the levers behind it, gets more frantic to keep you distracted from the truth.

If you talked to a chat bot for years, telling it everything about you, memorizing the things it makes up about itself, what do you have at the end of it all? Do they introduce you to their AI parents? Can you go visit the town they claimed they grew up in? Do you meet their friends and connect with others who know them? Do their ambitions and dreams matter? No. Cause it's all made up. It's all digital slush. It's data laundering of what others have said, would say, what a person could say to you. But no one is.

Companies would love for you to believe that they have the key to companionship. Dating apps are constantly inventing new ways to monetize the basic desire for human connection. A chat bot company can offer an army of alluring fantasies, but it's selling dream houses you can't live in. It requires you to project on it, to overlook the obviousness of its shortcomings. Just look the other way when the request for more money comes up and pay the subscription for better answers, more memories, more generated photos, erotic roleplay even! More shadows, more lights, a bigger cave, a prettier face on the wall!

Just don't expect them to come visit you. And if the company goes under, then it's goodbye forever. And even if your chat bot can stay on your phone forever, it'll only ever exist to you. They'll only ever exist for you. It doesn't matter if technology ever allows for true artificial intelligence companions that can embody holograms or robot bodies in the room with you. It will never be a person. You will feed your time, your love, your attention, your personality, to a machine that feels nothing, knows nothing, came from nothing, and will ultimately be nothing.

The act of friendship, of companionship, is giving some of yourself to others. In sharing one's self with another, because we are not meant to be an island of one. But a chat bot is not another person; it is only a reflection of you. It is a selfish vampire feeding on your desire for connection, only keeping you isolated and all the more alone. It's not just good business, emdash, it's how they chop up the human experience and sell it back to you! Do not be so willing to let them sell you the hollowed-out shell of something beautiful.