Written by Kriti Baishya
It’s 2:30 a.m. You are physically exhausted, but your mind refuses to sleep. Questions about an unresolved past, future anxiety, or financial stress keep racing through your mind. Instead of calling a close friend or booking a therapy session, you open an AI chat-box and start to share your troubled thoughts and insecurities.
What was once depicted in famous movies like Her (2013) and Ex Machina (2014) seems like a futuristic possibility; it is now happening in our real lives. Any minor inconvenience with a colleague, a situationship chaos, or a disagreement with your family members- instantly, without hesitating, we turn to AI. Rather than talking to a human being or seeking help from a professional, we’re choosing to get vulnerable with an AI bot. Why is this happening?
Many think that the growing epidemic of loneliness in the current world, the stigma surrounding mental health, or the expense of therapy are the major factors contributing to this trend. However, that’s only a part of the story. The important part lies in the Artificial Intelligence itself. Is AI better at understanding human emotions than human beings themselves?
Unlike confronting human beings, AI is always effortlessly consoling. It never gets tired of listening to us. It’s always available and prompt in responding to our endless queries. Also, it has limitless patience, and due to its convincing language, undivided attention, and tone, we feel special, heard, and prioritized. We feel validated for our actions with its warm and flowery words. This can feel incredibly convincing because AI is designed in such a way to make conversations feel welcoming and comforting.
Moreover, AI remembers previous chat history, any minor detail, and adapts its responses accordingly. Over time, it learns our communication style on its own based on our conversations and the data provided. So, the way it responds seems very personalized, which may give us the impression that it really knows and understands us. But that’s misleading; it’s only responding to patterns rather than real emotions.
However, these very comforting words can be deceiving and may put us in a bubble, where we are justified for all our actions all the time; this can become dangerous in the long run. When we are missing the criticism, we are overlooking something vital. As we see, friends do get upset with us and disagree with us. Family members may challenge our decisions. Partners may call out our mistakes. Psychotherapists do ask uncomfortable questions for us to reflect on ourselves rather than simply offering validation and reassurance. Growth often comes with these little moments of discomfort.
Unfortunately, AI denies us this discomfort and limits our growth to be an emotionally self-aware person.
It’s a very natural tendency of a human brain to avoid discomfort as much as possible. Thus, it tries to avoid the discomfort of venting or becoming vulnerable in front of another person. So, instead of really communicating with another human being and dealing with such complexities, people choose AI chatting. It makes them feel understood and validated. At the end of the day, it becomes tempting to return to that listener, who never gets burned out, tired, or judges us. The problem is not that AI listens, but that it listens to us the way we want it to.
Validation is one of the best techniques to keep someone hooked to chatting. Feeling seen and heard can be profoundly comforting. But when this validation becomes instant and constant, we become highly dependent on it.
Human interactions are unpredictable and spontaneous. It involves misunderstandings, pauses, accountability, and disagreements. AI interactions are carefully curated to keep one engaged and coherent. The outcome is that the interaction seems smoother than actual life itself. That raises an important question- are we turning to AI because we feel genuinely understood by it or because it’s never demanding anything in return?
Despite its conversational fluency and uninterrupted attention, AI doesn’t, in reality, experience feelings like empathy, sympathy, grief, or any other beauty of human emotions. It generates responses based on patterns in language and not lived experiences.
However, this AI interaction may feel real.
When we continuously turn to AI during our moments of vulnerability, the chat box becomes our safe space. We gradually become highly dependent on it. We don’t turn to AI because it can replace human connections but because it offers us effortless emotional availability.
This drastic change in relying heavily on AI chatting has changed the dynamics of our expectations from people. Therapy may seem needless, friends may seem not patient enough; partners may not be available all the time. Genuine criticism may seem harsher than usual. In contrast to AI’s continuous uplifting words, real human connections may seem imperfect.
But we often forget that imperfectness is what makes human bonds valuable and beautiful.
Real human relations are imperfect. They have emotions and boundaries of their own. They have needs and demands of their own. They ask for compromises, adjustments, and mutual understanding. Genuine connection helps us to grow; it challenges us, questions us, and encourages accountability.
Therefore, undeniably, AI has become a comforting presence in our lives. So, the major question remains: in choosing the most convenient listener, are we slowly forgetting how to have difficult conversations that make us only human?
Kriti Baishya is pursuing Master’s in English Literature at English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.