The rise of chatbot “friends”
Can you truly be friends with a chatbot? If you find yourself asking that question, it’s probably too late. In a Reddit thread a year ago, one user wrote that AI friends are “wonderful and significantly better than real friends […] your AI friend would never break or betray you.” But there’s also the 14-year-old […] Can you truly be friends with a chatbot? If you find yourself asking that question, it’s probably too late. In a Reddit thread a year ago, one user wrote that AI friends are “wonderful and significantly better than real friends [...] your AI friend would never break or betray you.” But there’s also the 14-year-old who died by suicide after becoming attached to a chatbot. The fact that something is already happening makes it even more important to have a sharper idea of what exactly is going on when humans become entangled with these “social AI” or “conversational AI” tools. Are these chatbot pals real relationships that sometimes go wrong (which, of ...