LOSING LONELINESS

In the age of A.I., you never have to feel lonely again. That's not necessarily a good thing.

- BY PAUL BLOOM

These days, everyone seems to have an opinion about A.I. companions. Last year, I found myself joining the debate, publishing a paper—co-written with two fellow psychology professors and a philosopher—called “In Praise of Empathic A.I.” Our argument was that, in certain ways, the latest crop of A.I.s might make for better company than many real people do, and that, rather than recoiling in horror, we ought to consider what A.I. companions could offer to those who are lonely.

This, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not go over especially well in my corner of academia. In the social sciences and the humanities, A.I. tends to be greeted less as a technological advance than as a harbinger of decline. There are the familiar worries about jobs—ours and our students’—and about the ease with which A.I. can be used for cheating. The technology is widely seen as the soulless project of Silicon Valley billionaires whose creativity consists mostly of appropriating other people’s. But what really rankles is the idea that these digital interlocutors are a plausible substitute for real friends or family. You have to be either credulous or coldhearted, many people believe, to think so.

Some of these anxieties are perfectly reasonable. Still, I sometimes wonder whether my colleagues' blanket rejection of artificial empathy bespeaks their own lack of empathy for those who could benefit most from the technology. There are debates about whether the "loneliness epidemic" that some have identified really exists. What's undeniable is that loneliness is now being taken seriously enough to warrant government intervention—both Japan and the U.K. have appointed ministers for loneliness. Epidemic or not, it remains widespread, and impossible to ignore.