According to NUS lecturer Jonathan Sim, AI is getting better at making us feel loved and understood. It might help people who feel alone. But there are risks. One big risk is that AI could change how we think about friendship. Some people are already spending a lot of money on AI “friends” or “girlfriends.” Others, like some teens, are becoming addicted to chatting with AI. It’s easy to rely on AI for emotional support because AI is always there and always says what we want to hear. We might forget how to handle our feelings on our own. We might start to think of friends as just tools to make us feel better, instead of real relationships where we grow and learn together. This could change what friendship means to us in a big way. We need to be careful and think about how we use AI friends so we don’t lose the true meaning of friendship.

by Claude 3.5 Sonnet