Your AI Friend Is Always Available. That Might Be the Problem.
There is a new kind of friend, and it answers at three in the morning. It never gets tired of your problems and never changes the subject to its own. It remembers what you said last month and asks how things turned out. Tens of millions of people now talk to one every day. This post is not a warning aimed at those people. The loneliness these apps answer is real, and the relief they provide is measurable. But the old texts this site reads had exact words for substitutes and for solitude, and both words have something to say about a friend with no absence in it. ...