Grey Bear Culture Magazine

“The growing use of AI is worrying in that people are using it to supplement real bonds.”

Snapchat AI, Chat GPT, for better or worse, has made its way into a lot of people’s every day lives. I myself am certainly guilty of using it when I definitely don’t need to.

One University student, August Sappho, reflected on this, considering the effects that AI has and how impersonal life is becoming, believing AI is being used to replace real friendships, as unlike your friends, AI provides instant gratification.

“There’s this growing need for instant gratification and typically we associate that type of thinking with drug and alcohol abuse because historically there has not been much else that could replace making friends, talking about your feelings, developing a skill and finding a community through that.”

However, August explained that because of fear, people don’t want to reveal their honest selves.

“People are terrified to reveal the “ugly” real and raw sides to them out of fear their connection would fizzle out or become burdensome.”

They said that in AI, there is a constant best friend who will always agree with you, with no risk of anything going wrong. You can also create skills and be perfect with no risk of there being any mistakes.

“I think AI is sinister in many ways but I think it’s mainly making real human connection less attractive and we need to fight that.

“We need more 3am chats with friends and we need to talk to each other more and ask questions more and email people more. People want to be risk free, mess free, mistake free but it’s just not human to be all those things it’s almost as if they themselves wish to be AI.”

August said this isn’t what makes people, human. It isn’t perfection that people like, it’s the messy parts of us instead.

Similar to using AI, August thinks people do the same for consumerism.

“They want to buy identities and cool punky homemade things or buy clothes sets from Shein to match their aesthetic or buy the stationary or the second-hand books that look especially run down and it’s not done in a genuine sense but very performatively. Because ideally the reason why those things got popular is because there was a patient zero who put in the effort and work of learning to crochet to make a hungry caterpillar scarf or collecting the bottle caps and can tabs to make pins”

She said that it is unnatural, and AI is trying to replace organic human things and as a result we are going to suffer. That genuine desire to create something is overruled by immediate satisfaction and anxieties of imperfection.

They said that furthermore, despite everyone wanting to create art and music, that in adulthood there is “little reward and encouragement”, and it is easy to make many mistakes. That it is this striving for perfection which people grasp for and thus become reliant on AI.

Ultimately, they said nothing can replace human connection and intimacy, and although we are relying on AI now, it cannot replace genuine community.

“Human connection and community and identity isn’t really something you can buy or generate from a computer and that’s the whole point.”

By Cameron Wagg