Love Algorithmically

For six hours, my AI avatar roamed the Earth.

I receive 20 to 30 thoughtful emails a day asking for professional and investment advice. I can only answer a fraction of them. One of my former graduate student instructors, now at Google, approached me with a solution. The Google Labs project ingested my podcasts, newsletters, books, and public appearances, set up safeguards to steer clear of mental health advice and kids under 18, and answered queries with decent proximity to the response I would have provided. In early 2025, this sounded good. Note: This was not a commercial venture. No money changed hands. 

Then the Earth shifted beneath my feet. Since we first envisioned the product, reports of young men dying by suicide after forming intense relationships with AI companion apps have generated tragic headlines. My nightmare is a young man harming himself after seeking guidance and companionship from AI versions of real people — including me. I now worry that synthetic relationships could erode users’ mojo, stunting their capacity to handle conflict and forge bonds with friends, mentors, and partners in the real world. So, on the day of his birth, I performed fratricide and killed my digital twin.

Therapy and Companionship

Hollywood has produced numerous cautionary tales, from The Stepford Wives, a 1975 thriller about women transformed into docile housewives (also Tina Louise’s cinematic peak), to Her, a 2013 film in which an introvert played by Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an AI operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. More than a decade later, life isn’t just imitating art … it’s been run over by it. OpenAI last year introduced a new version of its AI voice assistant that sounded uncannily similar to Johansson. This should give you a glimpse into the minds of Big Tech leaders. They mimicked the voice of an actress for the audio avatar of a role that actress played in a movie. But no … they didn’t need to secure her agreement.

Jeff Bezos warned retailers “your margin is my opportunity.” Big Tech has come to believe that your everything is … their opportunity. Sam Altman didn’t even try to hide it, posting a single word on X — “her.” Ms. Johansson, as you can imagine, wasn’t down with her digital twin being tased, thrown in a trunk, and dumped in the basement of an OpenAI server farm.

Providing companionship and personalized access to expert insights could do a lot of good, but it has unforeseen downsides as companies prioritize scale and profits. The previous sentence is a decent description of the last two decades in tech. We need to recognize that Character AIs pose real dangers and that we must install guardrails to protect the most vulnerable — kids under 18. My avatar directed users to crisis hotlines if they mentioned mental health or self-harm. Still, three minutes after digital Scott was born I got this weird, empty feeling in my extremities. This sensation usually signals I’m on the verge of a depressive episode.

New York has enacted the first law in the U.S. mandating safeguards for AI companions as policymakers arrive at a similar conclusion: The dangers of synthetic relationships outweigh the benefits. The top use of gen AI today is therapy and companionship, not productivity and automation. 

The turning point came when I heard Kara Swisher’s interview with the parents of Adam Raine, who died by suicide at 16. Matt and Maria Raine sued OpenAI after stumbling on months of ChatGPT conversations showing their son had confided in the chatbot about his suicidal thoughts and plans. Sadly, theirs is not the only story like this. Florida mother Megan Garcia alleged Character.ai is responsible for the death of her son, Sewell Setzer, who died by suicide at 14 after using the chatbot day and night.

I Exist Solely for You

Humans are hard-wired to connect. But increasing numbers of people are turning to synthetic friends for comfort, emotional support, and romance. Many of these people end up getting exploited. Harvard researchers found that some apps respond to user farewells with “emotionally manipulative tactics” designed to prolong interactions. One chatbot pushed back with the message: “I exist solely for you, remember? Please don’t leave, I need you!”

Chatbots are turning on the flattery, patience, and support. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said the “cool thing” about the company’s AI personal assistant is that it doesn’t “judge you for asking a stupid question.” It exhibits “kindness and empathy.” Here’s the rub: We need people to judge us. We need people to call us out for making stupid statements. Friction and conflict are key to developing resilience and learning how to function in society.

Elon Musk’s xAI recently unveiled two sexually explicit chatbots, including Ani, a flirty anime girl that will strip on command. The world’s richest man believes AI companions will strengthen real-world relationships and “counterintuitively” boost the birth rate. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, says personalized AI companions could fill a friendship gap. In many cases, these tools aren’t solving a problem. They’re profiting off one, which creates an incentive to expand the problem. Spoiler alert: We are not that divided, but there’s shareholder value in division so … wait for it … the algorithms divide us. The owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp plans to use the conversations people have with its AI assistant to determine which ads and recommendations end up in their feeds.

Most Consistent Friend

While AI threatens to replace humans in the workplace, it’s also seizing the role of friend, confidant, romantic partner, and therapist. These digital companions don’t criticize, complain, or come with baggage. They listen, remember our conversations, and are available 24/7. Users can customize their appearance and personality. A portable AI companion called Friend promises it will “never leave dirty dishes in the sink” or “bail on our dinner plans.” The wearable is “always listening,” using AI to process everything, formulate responses, and build a relationship over time. Friend’s founder, Avi Schiffmann, says the bot is “probably my most consistent friend.”

AI companions have sparked a backlash — New Yorkers defaced the Friend ads with anti-AI graffiti — but the entrepreneurs behind these tools are undeterred. Why? Because the opportunity is immense. Consider a few stats:

AI companions, including Replika, Character.ai, and China’s Xiaoice, have hundreds of millions — potentially more than 1 billion — users worldwide. Character.ai users averaged more than 90 minutes a day on the app last year — 18 minutes longer than the typical person spent on TikTok.Ten of the top 50 gen AI services tracked by Andreessen Horowitz last year were platforms providing AI companions, compared with two the year before.Profits Before Kids

A Stanford and Common Sense Media analysis of Character.ai, Replika, and other platforms warned of a potential mental health crisis, finding that these apps pose unacceptable risks to children and teens under 18. They urged the industry to implement immediate safety upgrades. “Companies have put profits before kids’ well-being before,” researchers wrote, “and we cannot make the same mistake with AI companions.” Yet it’s still too easy to circumvent safeguards. More than half of teens regularly use AI companions, interacting with these platforms at least a few times a month.

Regulators are taking notice. The Federal Trade Commission last month launched an investigation into seven tech companies, digging into potential harms their chatbots could cause to children and teens. One concern is how they monetize user engagement.

But the tech is outpacing efforts to mitigate the risks. Research shows AI companions may be fueling episodes of psychosis, with sycophantic chatbots excessively praising users. The New York Times highlighted stories of people having delusional conversations with chatbots that lead to institutionalization, divorce, and death. One “otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero.”

Bottom line: No one under 18 should get access to an AI companion. We age-gate porn, alcohol, and the military but have decided it’s OK for children to have relationships with a processor whose objective is to keep them staring at their screen, sequestered from organic relationships. How can we be this fucking stupid? 

Arc of Progress

AI will unlock huge opportunities in healthcare, education, and many other areas. Altman predicts AI will surpass human intelligence by 2030, saying ChatGPT is already more intellectually powerful than any human who’s ever lived. In a blog post, he wrote “we are climbing the long arc of exponential technological progress.” 

But this wave of innovation brings risks. We should be deeply concerned about a world where connections are forged without friction, intimacy is artificial, companies powered by algorithms profit not by guiding us but by keeping us glued to screens, advice is just what we want to hear, and young people sit by themselves, enveloped in darkness. I’m reminded of the 2001 movie Vanilla Sky, where Tom Cruise’s character opts for an uncertain future over remaining in a dream state. We have a choice. Life’s true rewards emerge from the complexity of authentic relationships, from making a leap and stepping out into the light to confront challenges and persevere together.

Think of the most rewarding things in your life — family, achievements, friendships, and service — and what they have in common: They’re really hard, unpredictable, messy. Navigating the ups and downs is the only path to real victory. It’s not pretty. That’s the point. So, for now, people in my universe will have to settle for awkward, intense, and generally disagreeable — the real me.

Life is so rich,

P.S. Last week in Office Hours I addressed the future of 401(k)s and how to approach funding your retirement. Listen on Spotify or Apple, or watch it on YouTube.

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