Key points

AI companionship doesn’t mirror only our need to connect. It also mirrors our desire to control.

We design bots to obey—and that dominance may reshape how we relate to people.

Artificial intimacy lowers tolerance for real human imperfection.

Loneliness fuels our turn to machines, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of isolation.

We like to believe that technology serves us. But in the age of AI companions, the truth may be more complicated. Lately, I’ve realized that most of our attention goes to what chatbots do to us—what they reveal about the technology and the companies behind it. Far less often do we ask the harder question: What do they reveal about us, and the desires of the people prompting them?

Every time we open a chatbot or design an AI companion, we enter a

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