AI isn’t a replacement for human interaction when dealing with emotions
Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.
When I ask young adults if they’ve ever formed a relationship with an AI companion, most say no.
When I ask if they’ve ever discussed their emotions with an AI chatbot, after a short pause, almost all of them say yes.
It might start with asking AI for a recipe, and somehow the conversation evolves to discuss a family argument. It might mean asking ChatGPT why you feel a certain way, or what to say after an uncomfortable conversation.
AI companionship is typically seen with character-driven services such as Replika and Character.AI but can also include traditional large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.
The debate over this companionship tends to be black and white: AI should have no role in our emotional lives, or it should be encouraged as a new form of friendship or romance. Both views miss the gray area in between.
People are already turning to AI for emotional support. Psychologists report patients using
chatbots to improve mental health, friendships and intimacy. But chatbots are no substitute for therapists or friends. They can give bad advice, reinforce harmful beliefs and create a false sense of understanding.
When people are aware of these risks, yet continue using LLMs for emotional support, this is the gray area conversations on AI companionship tend to miss.
Abigail Aggarwala | Digital Design Director
A friend once told me that loneliness isn’t always about having no one to turn to. Sometimes, it’s about loving the people around you so much that you hesitate to place your burdens on them.
Imagine it’s 3 a.m. You’re lying in bed, replaying a conversation from earlier. You don’t want to wake a friend, but you want to understand why you’re hurt. Or you just moved to a new city. You don’t have family nearby and haven’t made close friends yet. Something difficult is happening, but you don’t want to inconvenience someone with your problems.
People aren’t always looking for someone to solve their problems. Sometimes they just need somewhere to put their unnamed, unprocessed thoughts.
Human relationships require us to listen, respond and consider another person’s feelings, apologize, compromise and sometimes simply wait. A chatbot doesn’t ask for any of that. It’s available at 3 a.m. It doesn’t need you to ask how its day was first.
As my orange cat jumped onto my lap one afternoon, I had an unexpected thought: Maybe what
people want from companionship isn’t always encouragement, advice or even love.
Sometimes they just want to exist without being judged.
My cat doesn’t care that I got an A on an exam. It doesn’t treat me differently because I got a promotion. Most afternoons, my cat and I lead separate lives. Nothing important is happening. We’re simply sharing a space.
AI companionship is similar in some ways: low-pressure, consistently available and requires little from us. Except my cat doesn’t pretend to understand me. An AI chatbot does.
Humans have always created places to hold difficult experiences: religion, art, storytelling,
journaling and psychotherapy. AI is different because it validates what we’re feeling.
The danger isn’t that machines are becoming too human. It’s that they can
make relationships feel authentic without requiring us to be human with one another.
Fei-Fei Li, the godmother of AI, describes AI in terms of human agency: Technology can
expand what we can do, but it can also take away the effort and struggle through which we develop ourselves.
AI can help us understand why we feel a certain way. It can’t tell us whether someone truly loved us. It can help us prepare for a difficult conversation. It shouldn’t become the reason we never have it.
In young adulthood, much of life is uncertain: first jobs, serious relationships, breakups, moves, failures and questions about identity and purpose. AI offers something young adulthood often lacks: predictability.
But we’re not supposed to have everything figured out yet.
We need to question why we’re seeking out a chatbot: whether we’re looking for reassurance, understanding or companionship. We also must question the direction it takes us: whether it brings us closer to the people in our lives or pulls us further away from them.
We’re never going back to a world without AI. But we can decide whether these technologies remain tools or become where we live.
Some of our most important memories will never come from a three-hour conversation
with a chatbot. They’ll come from a beach day with friends, a summer ice-cream outing or a late-night argument about aliens.
Those moments require something AI can’t provide: another human being who is living in the moment with you.
We should stop asking whether AI can become our companion. It probably can.
The more important thing is what happens after we confide in AI. Whether we come away better able to understand ourselves and more willing to reach for the people around us.
Renee Yu, Class of 2026, can be reached at correrrenee@gmail.com.
