Kids are asking AI companions to solve their problems, according to a new study.
CNN
When two of James Johnson-Byrne’s friends got into an argument earlier this year, he didn’t know what to do. So the 16-year-old turned to an AI companion for advice.
The chatbot told Johnson-Byrne, who lives in Philadelphia, to separate his friends. He did so and it solved the immediate problem, he said. But “now they don’t talk much.”
The experience showed him that AI companions “can’t find the deeper issue,” he said. “I’d be scared to ask them a deep, underlying question.”
Another thing that struck Johnson-Byrne was how AI companions seemed to always agree with him and tell him what he wanted to hear. And he found the way they talk to be eerily similar to humans. At one point when he was talking to an AI companion, “I forgot it was actually not my friend,” he said.