NYT | A Burns
When I write about artificial intelligence and intimacy, people tend to imagine A.I. girlfriends or tech fanatics. Only extreme users would use chatbots to manage their social and emotional lives, or so the thinking goes. But in conversations with other Gen Z-ers, I’ve found that young people are relying emotionally on A.I. more than we realize. That subtly changes our relationships, even with people who have never touched A.I. When a flood of synthetic support enters the worlds of those around us, it distorts our mechanisms for intimacy and makes everyone a little lonelier.