In contrast, artificial intelligence offers an extremely seamless experience; it remembers details, reformulates emotions, and helps us say what is hard to say. With the repetition of this interaction, recent research has begun to monitor a shift in some users' preferences for sources of emotional support, with a tendency to choose artificial intelligence in certain contexts.
The picture becomes clearer as artificial intelligence transforms into a daily companion for some users. Experiments by users of applications like Replika have revealed the possibility of developing a strong emotional attachment to digital personas, and the emergence of feelings of loss among some users when the characteristics of emotional interaction changed within the application.
Imagine an employee returning home after a tiring workday, telling the artificial intelligence about a disagreement with their manager. They tell the story from their own angle, and receive an understanding and organized response. Minutes later, they feel they have regained their balance. With repeated experience, a friend who takes too long to reply might become more annoying, a partner who disagrees with us more exhausting, and a person who says "maybe you are wrong" uncomfortable.
Here the matter enters the core of cyberpsychology: technology may reshape our expectations of others.
Artificial intelligence can turn into a calm lawyer for our narrative; we present the problem to it, and it helps us arrange our arguments and gives our emotions a clear language. Over time, getting validation may become easier than facing the possibility of being wrong.
We need to feel understood, and we also need people who test our ideas and disagree with us. Human relationships grant us a space where we learn patience, review, apology, and tolerating the other as they are.
A machine may be a comforting companion, and it may help us think, organize emotions, and express them. But the human who shares our life comes with their own desires, memory, limits, and vision.
And herein lies the paradox: the better the machine becomes at understanding us, the more effort we may need to understand humans;
For the machine that does not disagree with us may be a comforting refuge. As for maturity, it appears at the moment when someone stands before us and says: I see you, but I see things differently.
