Friendship is that connection we share with people we have affection, respect and attention for.
People we trust.
People we can laugh with.
People we have a special connection to.

Can you really consider yourself “friends” with a person you know nothing about ?

What happens when you share about your life, when you have vulnerable moments and’emotions, and the person in front of you is never sharing or diving in their own depths ?
When they know more about the real you, than you do about them ?

How does that make you feel ?

Is it really possible to build a deep connexion and friendship with an AI companion , when we know it doesn’t have a personal history, a baggage of laughters and cries it carries along its life journey ?

Even though we can could use AI to feel heard, feel a presence or answer our needs in the moments we need it,
even though it is trendy and sexy to create AI that get closer to human emotional roots, there are obvious and inherent limits to the humanity of AI.

There’s nothing to fear about the raise of AI if we, humans, start to deeply embody our humanity.
Our stories.
What makes us truly unique.

Let’s dig deeper into the topic :

Of course you can (and will) feel good when an AI companion will provide you affection.
When you’ll ask for it.
Or even when it will be able to provide it recognising your patterns of thoughts, of behaviors or contexts that tend to provoke certain reactions in you.
In a very objective and non emotional way, it will be able to provide you unconditionally the affection you need and when you need it, probably better than any human that is subject to moods, fears (abandonment, rejection) and sensitive to reciprocity.

You can and will feel good when an AI companion will make you laugh and bring sunshine in your darkest days. Just because you will ask for it , or because it will know what you like , what you value and what you need. And certainly because that same AI will be present by your side 100%, without you even need to look out and ask for help. (Btw: Asking for help is a truly super-power and recognized as a strong leadership skill)

But can you (and will you) really feel good when an AI will never be able to tell anything about his own story?
His own real failures and victories. An AI can’t share his own discoveries and the wonder it felt when experiencing them.

Will you truly be able to trust a machine that will never be able to offer you an equal intimate story as what you shared, neither the range of emotions it didn’t went through and the vulnerability it didn’t experience ?

AI friendships and companions are (like much in our society) temporary fixes to the loneliness and anxiety that rule our societies.

The long term improvement of mental care, community feeling and humanity can only be led by us, humans, reconnecting to the courage we have inside, re-building human community and feeding the belonging we need.
All what we have not yet been taught to connect to.

And feel-good will only happen by us, humans, looking at ourselves and daring to connect deeply with each other.
Daring to face our (human) uncertainties
Daring to walk through our (human) confusion.
Daring to look honestly inside ourselves instead of building masks.

Only then, we will see we all have the same wounds and difficulties.
And we all have the same deep longing for hope, for more love, for purpose and contribution.

Yes, the future will be influenced by AI.
But our destiny can only be drawn by humans.