Can AI be your friend? Why we still need each other.

Recently I read that Mark Zuckerberg has suggested AI friends could help solve the loneliness epidemic.

It's strange, isn’t it? That the very platforms that have helped isolate us now are now put forward as the solution. That the same tech companies profiting from our addiction to screens now say they want to soothe the emotional fallout they helped create. I can’t shake the feeling that morals are continuously being pushed aside by these companies to make way for profits.

Because I believe, deep down, we all know: connection isn't something you can automate. 

You can’t code a real hug with a living being. You can’t download the comfort spending time with people who love you. No chatbot can replace the silence and beauty of a shared sunset, or the way laughter feels when it’s bouncing between real people, in real time, with no lag.

Has Mark Zuckerberg not felt this, I wonder? Why else would he be suggesting that AI could be a suitable replacement for a human friend?

Online, we second guess everything we see. Curated snapshots, filtered faces, headlines designed to provoke. It’s exhausting, and it chips away at trust. I don’t know about you, but anytime I’ve used Chat GPT it thinks everything I say is great, and, it agrees with me on pretty much anything. The real people around me don’t do that, they tell me the truth. Because they know me. They are also human themselves, so they get this messy, grey and blurred line world we live in.

I once moved to a new place, hours away from anyone I knew. While searching for real human friends, I tried to subsidise connection through a screen, I guess as a second-best sort of option. Evenings, in the place of people to hang out with, became a scrolling session on the sofa flitting between WhatsApp, Instagram and sometimes the news. I would have conversations online which would make me feel temporarily better whilst they distracted me, but as soon as they stopped, I felt worse than I had before I picked up my phone. This continued for months and only ever got worse.

So, I get it. I get just how bad it is to feel desperately lonely, and the epidemic needs addressing. I just do not agree that this is the way to do it. It feels lazy and ever so conveniently making the tech companies of this world richer. We need to rebuild real life grass roots human connection though, not this poor excuse for a friend.

Tech can be a tool, sure. But it’s not a substitute for the warmth of a hug or the joy of a shared walk, the life affirming feeling of being part of a real tribe. And it never will be.

Because real connection, the human kind, is messy, unfiltered and unpredictable.  It’s also healing. It roots us, reminds us of who we are, and gives us the courage to keep going.

So the idea that we’re now being sold AI as a replacement for friends? To me, that’s not connection. That’s convenience dressed up as care. And it’s not good enough.

We don’t need smarter machines pretending to be our friends.

We need each other.

See you in the offline world,

Laura x