Connection

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.

But great technological innovations always come with tradeoffs, and the shift to AI therapy has deeper implications than 1 million mental health professionals potentially losing their jobs. AI therapists, when normalized, have the potential to reshape how we understand intimacy, vulnerability, and what it means to connect.

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

Nowadays everybody is so scared of life and of risk and of anything that comes from it, that we've developed brittle shells around ourselves which make us rather lonely beings.

— Iain McGilchrist