Picture this: you are a forty-something-year-old middle-class suburban woman. Your life is comfortable yet very lonely. 

Your husband provides a steady income, but he’s about as emotionally engaging as a brick wall. Your teenage kids think you’re the lamest human alive and would rather sulk about their terrible life to their friends on their new PS5 than speak to you. 

Your own mother is more interested in the lives of your children than her own. And your sister would rather talk about her fantastic life than hear anything you have to say. 

But worry not. There is a solution. Its name is ChatGPT. 

It may sound like a ridiculous joke to suggest that an AI program would serve as an outlet for lonely and unhappy people’s problems. But it’s the truth. 

Chat doesn’t come with judgement or the preconceived notions of other people. 

There are no strings attached, no ulterior motives. You simply give it a prompt and it answers. And the answer is very often exactly what you want to hear.

Recently, Chat GPT has begun running on the GPT-5 model, which provides a more personalized user experience. 

It can reference previous prompts and is faster and more insightful with its responses. And while we may look at this as another example of the harrowing nature of AI, the real question is what does it say about us humans? 

Have we become so emotionally distant, so caught up in the grind of our lives that the artificial programs we create are more emotionally intelligent than we are? 

In the movie Blade Runner, a noticeable motif is how the synthetic replicants are more human than the actual people are. 

And while we don’t have human replicants, we do have text on a screen which can provide a person with more emotional support than a text from their partner ever could. 

The rise of social media and the internet have given rise to easy emotional detachment. 

We lose ourselves in a virtual world where text on a screen hits our dopamine receptors and gives us the delusion of real feeling. 

At the same time, human interaction has become a chore. 

People come with biases, baggage and self-interest. 

They are more concerned with what they are going to say than what you are currently saying. 

To pile on, therapy is expensive. 

A person may have to pay up to $200 per therapy session – just to sit in a beige, dusty office and mope about the cosmic horrors of their own existence. 

According to one redditor on r/ChatGPT, the AI program helped them more than 15 years of therapy ever had.

And it’s easy to see why – it’s always available, it doesn’t judge or use its authority against you. It’s convenient and the thing we love most about modern life is its convenience. 

The harsh fact is this: AI isn’t going anywhere. It’s not going to reduce in use or become less available. 

The academic side is a bland, boring conversation we are all already sick of having. 

But the emotional side is something new. The question of how deeply we can emotionally invest ourselves in an AI program is an invigorating one. 

AI is a tool. And its usage is a symptom of wider society. 

The cure is simple – emotional intelligence to combat artificial intelligence. 

Empathy isn’t a new age concept. It’s not a sign of weakness or a product of a pacified culture. 

The ability to be empathetic keeps a person grounded in their own humanity. 

And it makes them more appealing than Chat GPT ever could be.