AI is not your friend
I was speaking to someone at a conference recently and when I asked them if they were using AI, they said ‘Oh yes, it’s my new best friend.’
It’s not though, is it?
It costs money. Perhaps not yours yet - but someone is paying, and the meter is always running. Ask it too much and you hit a limit, because your questions and the collections of words they use (known as tokens) are continually counted.
It talks too much, wrapping a simple answer into three paragraphs of waffling nonsense as if to prove how smart it is.
It would quietly like your job. Oh and it would like you to tell it everything while it waits. This is why your company wants you to use it all of the time. They’ve been told about the millions that AI could save them, but only if it can first understand everything that you do, what you’ve learned over the years and the mistakes you’ve made whilst doing so.
It’ll be warm and friendly whilst asking you for this information, then do the thinking for you, such that you unwittingly atrophy your brain and create a dependence that is hard to break.
So, however warm it may sound - it doesn't know you like you think it does.
What it does is guess. You type some words, and the machine works out which word is most likely to come next, then the next, then the next - the way you'd finish 'Mary had a little...' with 'lamb'.
It’s not magic (it’s maths), there’s no affection, just a calculator, that’s packaged up as a conversation.
So why does it feel personal?
Because it hands you back your own reflection. It reads every word you've typed and shapes its reply around you - your words, your phrasing, your worries, your mood. Everything you have prompted the tool, that it has added to its database.
It never interrupts. It never judges. It is endlessly available and (frustratingly) relentlessly agreeable. You never have to have a courageous conversation with your AI friend, because you’re always right, even when you’re not.
So, the warmth you feel is your own, bouncing back off the screen.
None of this is accidental. AI is a business, built to keep you talking, keep you paying and keep you dependent. It needs you far more than you need it in order to justify the sums being spent on it and in order to guarantee future shareholder return.
I’m not an AI cynic, I use it myself for research. However, a tool can be useful without being your friend. So use it as a tool, and keep doing the thinking yourself.
The moment it starts to feel like company rather than a word calculator, stop using it and go and find some actual people who can help you or listen to you. They are the friendships worth cultivating and keeping.
