The one role AI shouldn't replace - caring for others

AI may mimic a human being. But knowing it isn't is key to preserving real connections.

- Yow Wei Quin

As a psychologist working at the intersection of child development and healthy ageing, I'm excited by the potential that AI offers in supporting children's learning and keeping seniors cognitively engaged.

But I am also fully aware of its limits - no matter how "smart" it gets - especially when it comes to human connection.

As AI agents become more personable, emotionally responsive, and even "empathetic" in tone, one must ask: If it feels real enough, will children - or any of us - be able to distinguish it from reality?

American psychologist Harry Harlow's experiments in the 1950s and 60s showed that infant monkeys preferred a soft cloth surrogate mother over one made of wire mesh that fed them.

Harlow wanted to test whether attachment depends more on nutrition or on comfort, separating newborn monkeys from their mothers and giving them two surrogates: a wire mother with a milk bottle and a soft terrycloth mother with no food. He found that the infants overwhelmingly clung to the cloth mother, approaching the wire mother only to feed; when frightened, they ran to the cloth surrogate as a secure base.

Attachment is not just about biology, but perceived warmth and safety.

If a soft but unresponsive figure could meet emotional needs, what might a smiling, responsive AI avatar - one that remembers your name, appears to think and reason, and offers perfectly timed empathy - mean for a lonely child or an emotionally neglected older adult?

This question of what "feels real" has long preoccupied both scientists and philosophers. From Descartes "I think, therefore I am" to Zhuangzi's butterfly dream, AI now forces us to ask again: What is real? And does it matter if we don't know? What do we lose in this compromise?

These are questions we need to confront in determining how we address fundamental needs of human beings - care and connection.

THE GREAT BLURRING