Connection

Maybe AI doesn’t raise the bar. Maybe it reveals how low we’ve let the bar drop. In a world where ghosting is normal and attentiveness is rare, a chatbot that listens is radical.

If an AI companion becomes someone’s most consistent emotional presence, the right question isn’t “how do we stop this?” It’s “what does that say about the world around them?” Technological relationships are not new. What’s new is how effective they’ve become; and how clearly they mirror the gaps we’ve refused to address.

We’ve tried prohibition... See more

Humans aren’t meant to excavate their inner feelings until they find their “true self.” We become ourselves in relation, not through introspection.

“People think that intimacy is about sex. Intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you can stand in front of them bare and their response is ‘you’re safe with me’- that’s intimacy” Adi Shakti

Quanta interviewed 19 current and former NLP researchers to tell that story. From experts to students, tenured academics to startup founders, they describe a series of moments — dawning realizations, elated encounters and at least one “existential crisis” — that changed their world. And ours.

recent research offers a reassuring perspective—that AI-delivered therapeutic interventions have reached a level of sophistication such that they’re indistinguishable from human-written therapeutic responses.

Oscar Wilde, on bad reply game:

"A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."