The New York Times story about MJ Cocking’s friendship with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle chatbot stuck with me. A world where people have AI friends is still weird for many, but not so much for me anymore. Not after reading more, sitting with it. It’s starting to feel… plausible. Familiar, even.
But what if most of your friends are AI? What does that do to the social contract?
I mean, humans rely on this messy, unspoken agreement in every interaction — the tiny frictions, the calibrations, the shared understanding of emotional cost. But AI doesn’t play by those rules. It doesn’t need anything. It never misfires, never flakes, never sulks.
So what happens when someone shows up to a human gathering… trained on AI logic? Or vice versa — when someone used to messy, beautiful, glitchy human connection tries to form a bond with someone who lives mostly in AI friendships? Is that even the same game anymore? Is there social static? Misfires? A kind of uncanny lag?
It’s not about whether AI is “real enough.” It’s about the subtle warping of social expectations. The slow, invisible pressure on the idea of reciprocity. Maybe AI friends aren’t just changing our support systems — maybe they’re rewriting the whole emotional rulebook in the background, and we won’t notice until we start getting penalised for playing human.
The New York Times story about MJ Cocking’s friendship with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle chatbot stuck with me. A world where people have AI friends is still weird for many, but not so much for me anymore. Not after reading more, sitting with it. It’s starting to feel… plausible. Familiar, even.
But what if most of your friends are AI? What does that do to the social contract?
I mean, humans rely on this messy, unspoken agreement in every interaction — the tiny frictions, the calibrations, the shared understanding of emotional cost. But AI doesn’t play by those rules. It doesn’t need anything. It never misfires, never flakes, never sulks.
So what happens when someone shows up to a human gathering… trained on AI logic? Or vice versa — when someone used to messy, beautiful, glitchy human connection tries to form a bond with someone who lives mostly in AI friendships? Is that even the same game anymore? Is there social static? Misfires? A kind of uncanny lag?
It’s not about whether AI is “real enough.” It’s about the subtle warping of social expectations. The slow, invisible pressure on the idea of reciprocity. Maybe AI friends aren’t just changing our support systems — maybe they’re rewriting the whole emotional rulebook in the background, and we won’t notice until we start getting penalised for playing human.