With the increase in A.I. usage and more advanced chat bots being created every few months, there have been more and more people indulging in A.I. friendships. I find it so sad to see people using A.I. as a substitute for friends, even when they have irl friends. I acknowledge that friendship is hard, very hard. However, the increasing trend of A.I. friendships really show how most folks don’t really know what it means to be and have a friend. For starters, let’s address how the “making friends is way easier when you’re a kid” statement is such an overused myth. The reason why we lose most of our friends once we leave school is because those people weren’t really our friends to begin with, they were acquaintances. Just because someone you share the same space with is nice to you doesn’t mean they’re your friend nor want to be your friend. Being nice to strangers who share the same space is what a functional member of society is supposed to do. It’s impossible for anyone to be friends with everyone within their shared space because no human can reasonably keep up with and give an equal amount of attention to that many people. Really think about all those kids who were nice to you in school. Did you hang out with them during weekends, holidays, or summer vacation? Did your conversations go beyond casual small talk? Did y’all invite each other to y’all’s birthdays? Have y’all ever been to each other's houses? If the answer to all of these is no, then you had an acquaintance the entire time, not a friend. Hence why y’all stopped talking to each other once y’all permanently left the shared space. Once people leave the restricted and uniformly regimented confines of a school, they realize just how hard it is to fit another person in their lives. The harsh truth is most folks don’t know how to move past the acquaintances stage because that’s the most difficult part of making friends. Being nice to someone you see five times a day for 8+ hours is easy. To share information about your personal life, interests, and beliefs with another person requires a level of vulnerability, humility, and empathy that some folks aren’t willing to give or just don’t have.
True friendship also requires people to understand themselves enough to know who they want to be friends with and what they want out of friendship. If you’re not getting the attention or care you want out of your current group of friends, then they’re the wrong friends for you. Most people aren’t unwilling to take the initiative to find new friends because they don’t want to go through the transitional state of being alone. On the one hand, I empathize with that because I’ve been there. On the other hand, I can’t emphasize how important that transitional period of loneliness is when finding the right friends.
I’ve moved 10 times throughout my life. Growing up, social media wasn’t nearly as mainstream as it is now, so I regularly lost contact with every friend I made. By the time I graduated from high school and went to college, the one friend group I did manage to make disbanded and moved on. I didn’t really make an effort to contact my other high school friends because it became more apparent just how different we were as people once we were away from our shared environment. How different our personalities, hobbies, and long term goals were as we got older and more independent. As I soon realized that, I became more aware of how little social or emotional satisfaction I got from being their friend. Even though I still cared for all of them dearly, it was clear that we didn’t make that big of an impact in our lives considering how easily we all moved on from each other once we went our separate ways. It wasn’t until I was truly friendless that I realized that I didn’t know who I was outside of my previous friend groups. Moving several times compelled me to develop a habit of artificially retrofitting myself into any clique that would accept me. Even if we didn’t share any common interests, it was better than being known as “that kid with no friends” in school. So instead of finding a new clique to be adopted into, I spent my college years being in deep introspection. I tried to reconnect with myself and really think about what my ideal friends would be. It was during that introspection that I soon discovered that I was queer and agnostic. That’s when I had the ultimate epiphone. My queerness and agnosticism were the reasons why I never truly fit into any of my school friend groups. All of my former friends and the people I tried to befriend were girls that were cisgender, straight, and/or came from conservative Christian families. None of their interests or life goals aligned with mine, therefore, we had no common strong ground to build a friendship. While this wasn’t true for all of them, it made me realize that I always just went along with whatever they wanted while never talking about my own interests because I was desperate for acceptance. Leaving my high school friends behind and being alone for 4 years was hard, but it was a necessary step to discovering myself and finding my real friends. Now I have more friends than ever because I was finally able to choose the right community. The community where I felt truly accepted and seen.
I’m not saying that it’s impossible for cisgender, straight, and/or came from conservative Christian to befriend people who are the opposite of that. What I am saying is for me personally, all of those traits were why I could never truly connect with my former friends or the other people in my shared space. People severely underestimate how much someone’s upbringing and beliefs affect their ability to befriend people who are different from them. People also don’t understand how being part of a community who have the same upbringing as you and whose beliefs align with yours is a privilege that not everyone has. Anyone who’s lived in a small town knows how isolating it is to be the odd one out in a uniform community. It’s why many people have to leave their small towns behind in order to find where they truly belong.
So as tempting as it is to laugh at all those people who claim an A.I. chat bot as their friend, I can’t help but empathize because I’ve been there. I’ve been in a position where I was lonely even when I was surrounded by people. I’ve been the perpetual outsider in a friend group and an entire town no matter how hard I tried to fit in. However, I took the initiative to step away from it all and come to terms with my identity and needs. The people who use A.I. chat bots are simply using it as a crutch. Crutches can be helpful, but eventually you have to learn how to walk on your own because it’ll make your life so much better and easier. It’s easy to rely on machines for companionship because they’ll agree with everything you say, and never insult you, they’ll always be available whenever we want them. However, human connection isn’t meant to be that easy or convenient. We aren’t meant to have easy access to other humans 24/7 because everyone has their own life. We aren’t meant to always expect unquestioning loyalty and positivity from other people. It’s being able to work around those common inconveniences and unpredictability that makes human friendships so rewarding and something to be proud of.
Where my empathy and sympathy runs dry is when it comes to the people who are simply too egotistical and/or narcissistic to make genuine friends. The fact that folks were rioting over one of OpenAI’s previous updates that made the chat bots less unquestioningly agreeable really shows just how many people can’t handle any ounce of disagreement. Friends aren’t supposed to give unconditional encouragement or blind agreements. The best friends you’ll ever have are the ones who aren’t afraid to call you out on your dumb ideas or out of pocket remarks. It’s the same principle behind why parents punish their kids when they do something wrong. They do that because they love you and want you to be a better person. Unfortunately, some people only care about instant validation more than genuine connections. Even though it’s been apparent several times that companies have the ability to take their “friends” away by altering their data or locking them behind a paywall, they still choose the head empty convenience of A.I. or humans. Those people are a prime example of how the loneliness epidemic is, in many ways, self-inflicted.
P.S. There's another can of worms regarding A.I. romantic partners. I’m aromantic, asexual, and an introvert with no desire to get married. So I have much else to say besides that human connection of all kinds will always be healthier and more rewarding for people than anything a billion dollar tech company can produce. Especially considering a company can’t shut off a human or restrict the ability to talk to them behind subscriptions fees.
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