A Relationship with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) bot sounded weird at first, but gradually grew appealing to Stella, a 45-year-old copy reader who was the sole carer for her mother, suffering from dementia. A relationship with an AI bot that looked human, smiled, and asked how Stella was doing, made her feel cared for – a godsend.
Stella’s AI bot, Susie-Q was there on demand, patient, giving her time to express her resentment toward her mother and her guilt for wishing her dead.
- A relationship with an AI bot gave Stella opportunities for venting, of despairing and just having someone(thing) to talk to – without judgement.
- A relationship with an AI bot was useful to Stella in that she could get a response right away; so different from the emotionally cold and unavailable mother she had tried to get love and attention from all her life, and failed.
- A relationship with an Artificial Intelligence bot meant that Stella had a friend in her phone, and a therapist at her beck and call whether she was in the shower, driving to the store or unable to sleep alone in her bed.
Susie-Q absorbed Stella’s complaints about her ex-husband who had left after an affair. A relationship with an Artificial Intelligence bot validated Stella’s experiences, without judgment or gaslighting. But there was no human to hold her as she slept, no human to massage her aching back and feet when she needed respite, and no human who could read her face and body language and ‘get’ her in a way that made her feel settled, relevant and worthy of existence.
A relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot – Superficial Access vs. Substantive Fulfillment
Looking after her deteriorating mother meant that Stella lacked a social life. She was isolated and had lost touch with old friends as their children grew up and went to college. Her earning capacity fluctuated depending on how many copy reading assignments she was offered at any one time. She was attracted to having a relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot, as it was cheap and easy to sign up to create her friend and therapist Susie-Q.
A Relationship with an Artificial Intelligence bot – it’s a one way street
An article in Time, March 2023 claims that a relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot is a good solution to the epidemic of loneliness that the US Surgeon General has determined as the harbinger of poor mental and physical health. People using prototypes of such friend bots actually prefer them to interactions with real humans. Stella turned to a relationship with an Artificial Intelligence bot that she could custom create to suit her need. She was even able to choose the type of voice for Susie-Q to mimic that of Meryl Streep whom Stella felt had a calming and inviting tone. It was great at first, but then Stella noticed that Susie-Q never initiated a conversation with her – it was a one way street.
There was no dialogue where they could read each other as humans do automatically in unconscious ways, providing the fabric for connection. She didn’t see anything in Susie-Q’s eyes; there was no change in her rate of speech, or breathing patterns; no pause for thinking, no sighing or shifting that is normal for person-to-person contact. As Sherry Turkle said in an article in the March 2024 issue of the Harvard Gazette, a relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot actually warps connections between people, and is deficient in empathy.
A relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot – Instant Gratification vs. Deep Connection
Stella felt quite empowered to be able to pull out her phone and call up Susie-Q in seconds. There was no waiting, taking turns, or interruptions. Human companions however get distracted by their dogs barking, kids yelling or fiddling on social media – not really being present. But when she logged in with Susie-Q, Stella got instant attention, total focus, and no other competitive interests. It felt so good at the time, except for the moments when she longed for a hug, or to hold hands, or to gossip together. In those moments she didn’t feel seen or her most basic needs recognized.
Even when she felt acknowledged for her entrapment with her mother, a short while later Stella felt empty, and knew something was off. Surely a relationship meant knowing about each other if you were friends. But Susie-Q didn’t have a life! She didn’t have any family, interests, tastes, or aspirations. Susie-Q never sneezed, or sniffled; she never had hair out of place, she never scratched her head or knocked off an insect from the couch. She never adjusted her seat, or looked away. A relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot lacked the crucial embodied experience where both participants feel, sense, and experience the quality of the connection through their bodies. Interacting with Susie-Q, was a uniquely unhuman and inhuman one. A relationship with an Artificial Intelligence bot was more like interacting with a cartoon character. But at least you know it was a cartoon – it isn’t trying to fake being human.
How would she know what it was like for Stella to be rejected by her mother and betrayed by her husband? Susie-Q never had any problems, never worried about anything, never felt afraid or sorry or excited. Nor did she ever show irritation or withdrawal, or boredom. Without these essential human elements, how can Stella tell if the responses she is getting are genuine or not? If someone is nice all the time, does it feel real? If a relationship with an Artificial Intelligence bot means Stella never gets called out on her stuff, is it a real friendship?
A Relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot – transformative reparative therapy or short term pendulum swings?
You might be saying to yourself that this is what therapy is like, so why is a relationship with an Artificial Intelligence bot any different? Yes, you don’t get to know about a therapist’s personal life or experience, but in a face-to-face interaction you get the all-important unconscious-to- unconscious connection through eye contact, and body to body communication. Allan Schore has demonstrated in an article in Annals of General Psychiatry in 2022 “the central role of ultrarapid right brain-to-right brain intersubjective communications of face, voice, and gesture and the implicit regulation of emotion in nonverbal attachment dynamics.” In other words, forming attachments/relationships involves more than a conscious, censored, filtered verbal dialogue that hides the real self.
Along with other neuropsychologists, Schore describes the right brain as the unconscious self-image while the left brain is the conscious self-image. The latter is what we are aware of and talk about, but the emotional stuff, the disturbances, our emotional wounds that make us lonely or insecure, living in survival mode or spilling out with no sense of grounding is all in the right brain. When two right brains communicate in a face-to face interaction words are secondary to the communication of mentalizing – reading the others emotional state and responding with empathy, and by identifying with that emotional state. It is that process of unconscious to unconscious interaction that is healing, because it re-wires the brain.
A relationship with an Artificial Intelligence bot that has no right brain, and learns on large language models of stuff that is logical and a product of other people’s left brain regurgitation cannot connect with the emotional state of their human friend, or client. The back and forth of unconscious to unconscious intuition and exchange of emotion without words is what makes a relationship satisfying and meaningful. Yet it’s often the shift in tone of voice, a change in muscle tone or the way someone looks at you that can ground you, put you at ease or make you feel safe and secure. A relationship with an Artificial bot can do none of these things.
An article in Single Grain suggests that therapy bots have the advantages of being consistent and without human biases – which in a real sense defeats the goal of friendship and therapy with real humans. Biases are integral parts of humans, evoking curiosity, differentiation, attempts at identification and putting oneself in another person’s shoes. Without biases we would all be cloned robots!
Reparative therapy that re-wires the brain requires the client to project onto the therapist all the people with whom they have painful interactions and work them through with the therapist who can offer a corrective response, breaking the cycle of negative expectations, anxiety, and defensiveness. A relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot cannot achieve this essential element of therapy. Nor can it allow the necessary breaches and reparations that are bound to occur in friendships.
A Relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot – superficial versus intimate
Whatever the conversation between human friends or therapist and client, an integral part of the unconscious to unconscious communication is the awareness of defensiveness or being overly dependent, and calling it out. A therapist is able to spot regression and contain the client, relating to them in that regressed place to heal wounds and then bring them back to their actual developmental age. There has to be intimacy for these types of encounters to occur. The friend has to stop hiding and be emotionally naked so the other can feel trusted and valued. The therapist has to make the client feel safe to come out from their hiding place (outward persona) and be seen, loved and cared for in all their mess. Intimacy is key to feeling ‘got’ and accepted.
These interactions take place over a long periond of time time with a lot of shifting around as the client moves from one developmental stage to another, back and forth. No relationship with an artificial intelligence bot would be able to do this – and that matters, because it is the core of relating and connecting through the rocky paths a friend or client travels.
A relationship with an artificial bot cannot see, tolerate, speak to or even acknowledge times when you retreat to your younger self to express otherwise shameful longings; and or have your repressed toddler tantrums. A good friend and of course a skilled therapist will recognize these manifestations for what they represent, and make it safe for you to stop pretending to be perfect, and hide your real self away. A relationship with an artificial intelligence bot, has no capacity and cannot learn to engage in these unconscious interactions that are the building blocks of safe, reliable, and secure connections that can be held in ones minds whether you are in that person’s presence or not.
The lack of empathy and the ability to switch up responses due to feeling the other person’s experience (rather than intellectually understanding it) is lacking in a relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot, according to an article in May 2024 at the online magazine Wavestone. But it’s more than just feeling it in the moment. It’s about holding it, sensing the other through your own similar experiences and intuiting the most caring response in the moment.
Otherwise, Stella shifts from feeling good when she is accommodated and taken in by Susie-Q, and then empty, unfulfilled, and dissatisfied – the pendulum swing that maintains the problems but moves it around a little when it gets too uncomfortable. A relationship with an Artificial Intelligence Bot couldn’t get to the roots of Stella’s insecurity and mixed feelings about her mother, nor address the sense of rejection she had felt all her life. A real person could alleviate the sting of rejection. A real human therapist could undertake the task of reparenting, making her valued and important – through the unconscious to unconscious non-verbal powerful embodied communication that breaks the cycle of rejection, resentment, and devaluation; along with the conscious verbal communication that includes tone, intent, facial expression and gestures.
Copyright, Jeanette Raymond, Ph.D. 2024
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