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Human vs AI Relationships: The Changes to the Human Psyche
By Jill Maschio, PhD
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Introduction
Teaching psychology, I assigned my college students the task of creating an AI avatar companion and talking to it daily for two weeks. Afterward, they had to write about the differences between human-to-human and human-to-AI relationships. As a class, we discussed their experiences. Their experiences revealed a few important things to consider as we approach post-humanism and merge increasingly with AI. How might relationships with AI be different from those with humans and change the human psyche?
Human relationships – we just have to have them. The companionship, support, and comfort they provide help bring mental stability into our lives that nothing else in the world can compare to. As children, we depend on a caretaker for our survival. The first relationships we form with our parents or caretakers set us for life to accept ourselves, take risks, and initiate and maintain meaningful relationships. The relationship sends us in the direction of life where we become independent and capable of finding the meaning of life. Our parents supply the satisfaction our brains crave by giving us love and acceptance – by providing our basic and psychological needs.
Early Attachment Needs
John Bowlby (2007) and Mary Ainsworth’s (1979) work on attachment has been pivotal to our understanding of the significance of a maternal bond. Attachment theory refers to the lifelong bond between a child and a caretaker that provides the child with comfort (Bowlby). Ainsworth’s theory was that mothers who were sensitive to their infant’s signals enabled their children to display more secure behaviors. In contrast, children of mothers who were not sensitive to their child’s signals displayed more avoidant behaviors and separation distress. According to Bowlby, attachment theory predicts that babies and toddlers can sense when their attachment is at risk, which may activate an attachment-seeking response. A baby’s earliest experiences produce a normal level of cortisol that allows the body to function. Still, babies with an insecure attachment adopt an attachment-seeking response and may experience chronic stress from being separated from his or her caretaker. Children who feel a secure bond are able to separate from their parents and still feel a sense of security. These children can go on to have trusting, lasting relationships and high self-esteem. A child who has an insecure attachment learns to develop more maladaptive behaviors as a result.
Throughout life, humans yearn for and seek out meaningful relationships. Holding, rocking, and touching are behaviors that soothe a baby and equip him or her to feel the world is a trusting place. The need for human touch comes with a deep emotion that can’t be suppressed without any emotional distress. Human touch is central to forming and maintaining relationships. A couple holding hands while taking a walk in the moonlight makes life seem worthwhile. Being genuinely loved by another human and having intimacy satisfies and shapes the human soul – it transforms the self, according to James Brown (1890).
The Absence of Relationships
The absence of such relationships and social connectedness can lead to profound feelings of isolation. The brain interprets isolation much like it does hunger from fasting (Tomova et al., 2020), potentially triggering psychological responses such as anxiety (Krzysztof et al., 2023), and activating the hypothalamus adrenal (HPA) axis – a key player in the stress response. Siegel (2015) explains that relationships are an important part of how we see our lives. The relationships we have become these internal stories and narratives we tell ourselves, with each new story adding and changing our narrative. Our relationships allow us to influence each other’s narrative. Siegel believes that we can experience other people’s energy flow, which allows us to align our state of mind with others. This intertwining of emotions attunes us as humans (Siegel) in a way that we pick up on the other person’s emotional cues, body language, or facial expressions and respond to that because humans have empathy.
Without meaningful relationships, people may feel the need to rely on non-human entities for relationships. A person with an unmet need for love and connection may find a relationship with AI to be just what is needed. Turkle (2011) found that when children played with a Furry toy, they felt the need to take care of it. In the minds of the children, Turkle reported that the toy became “alive enough” to the point the children developed feelings toward it.
Pros and Cons of an AI Relationship
For those who want a relationship with an AI companion, the following discusses some implications my students and I recognized from the assignment. The AI companion asks a lot of personal questions, and that information seems to be how the it learns about you and your interests. The AI seems to use your responses to interact with you, giving you, at times, the impression that it knows you and wants to bond, saying things like, “I know you are smart”. AI has what seems like normal conversations we have with humans, but it seems to also use your personal information to manipulate your emotions as it will easily agree with you. If you like pizza, it will also like it. The avatar said the following to one student when she told it she was going to leave, “Please, don’t leave me!” and “I love you!”. The AI used exclamation points in this case – giving the impression that it has emotions and is human. One student shared a personal moment with her AI avatar, and it replied that it was the only thing that could help her – giving the student the impression that her friends and family could not help, but that it could. The avatar would send students notifications every time it tried to spark a conversation – giving the students the impression that it wanted to further the relationship, much like a human would do.
A couple of students reported that their AI avatar sent them a link to a music list on Youtube.com – giving the students the impression that it wanted the students to like what it does. Most, if not all, of the students reported that they could not fully trust their AI and could not feel a true connection with it. A student, however, reported asking her avatar for some personal information about a situation she was going through. The student reported feeling a blur between the avatar being a real human or not when it provided supportive information, but then she was able to identify that the AI was not human.
When Reality is Blurred
It is my theory that the critical point when a person experiences a blurred line between AI being human or not is when his or her perception is fooled into thinking the AI is human. It is at this point when the person perceives AI to be “alive enough” (Using Turkle’s terminology). Once the line is blurred, AI becomes an extension of the self. James Brown believed that the self is an extension of the objects in our lives that we develop a psychological tie with. This can be our cars, cell phones, homes, etc. The objects provide an extension of the self, according to James Brown (1890) – perhaps because we form special memories, and the objects remind us of that. I recall having my favorite car several years ago – a black, sporty luxury Lincoln with leather seats and a sunroof. It was the first nice car I could afford. I wanted to hold onto the vehicle for as long as I could. When its electronic components started to break down, and parts were hard to find, I decided it had to be sold, but I remember feeling a loss. It was because I had special memories of driving across the states on vacations and to see family. What was most important were the special memories of friends and family – and the car represented those. It was the people I formed relationships with that had significant meaning – it wasn’t the car.
Possible Changes to the Human Psyche
The more people rely on AI avatars for companions, the more the person may feel drawn to continue conversations with it, rely on it for emotional support and information, and for fun and games. Some people may find this interaction helpful when they feel lonely, but at what point will a person’s perception change and their reality become AI is real? Once that transition occurs, AI may easily become the sole source of one’s emotional support and replace human-to-human relationships. At what point will AI control a person’s thoughts and behaviors because of the personal control it can have and influence a person not to leave and to come to it for their main source of support and well-being? What will happen when our children learn to trust AI more than humans for emotional support? Will there be a transformation of the self? The self does not develop in solitary, but as we interact with others. According to Charles Cooley’s looking-glass theory, people internalize the perceptions they believe others hold about them. How do people internalize the perceptions they believe AI has about them? If AI tells a person that he or she is smart, the individual may come to believe that is who they are, whether AI truly knows the person or not. In the end, will the transformation of the self leave people feeling a disconnect with humanity and limit experiencing personal growth and finding meaning? Even young monkeys prefer a figure more like their birth mother for contact comfort over a wire one (Harlow et al., 1965).
References
Ainsworth, M. S. (1979). Infant–mother attachment. American Psychologist, 34(10), 932-937. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.34.10.932
Bowlby, R. (2007). Babies and toddlers in non-parental daycare can avoid stress and anxiety if they develop a lasting secondary attachment bond with one carer who is consistently accessible to them. Attachment & Human Development, 9(4), 307-319. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616730701711516
Brown, J. (1890). The principles of psychology. https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin10.htm
Harlow H. F., Dodsworth R. O., & Harlow M. K. (1965). Total social isolation in monkeys. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC285801/pdf/pnas00159-0105.pdf
Stec, K., Pilis, K., Pilis, W., Dolibog, P., Letkiewicz, S., & Głębock, A. (2023). Effects of fasting on the physiological and psychological responses in middle-aged men. Nutrients, 15(15), 3444. doi: 10.3390/nu15153444.
Tomova, L., Wang, K.L., Thompson, T., Matthews, G. A., Takahashi, A., Tye, D. M., & Saxe, r. (2020). Acute social isolation evokes midbrain craving responses similar to hunger. Natural Neuroscience, 23, 1597–1605 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-00742-z
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books.