One of the biggest challenges in the AI discourse amounts to a matter of definition, as reporter Matt Taibbi points out in his latest article on Racket News. What’s AI actually for? Or perhaps a better question is what, ultimately, are people actually using it for?

The answers vary. AI is everything from an advanced search engine to a personalized girlfriend for the lonely. Those are two quite different roles, to say the least. I can either employ AI to summarize a complicated research article or ask an AI bot to marry me. Taibbi writes:

NPR alone has done a disturbing number of features recently about human-A.I. interaction, with headlines that one shouldn’t need to think to answer, like “What to do when your AI says ‘I love you’” and “If a bot relationship FEELS real, should we care that it’s not?” Instead of “turn it off” and “yes, dummy,” the station’s answer is to consult an “artificial intimacy expert,” a thing that absolutely should not exist outside of horror fiction. Still, the scariest stories are journeys into AI-human connection. –World Grossed Out as Yuppie-Chatbot Mating Surges

Taibbi credits classic dystopian warning tales about robotic overthrow for his suspicion of AI models. His worry begs the question: Did science fiction predict or help create the technological nightmare we seem to be entering? Perhaps it’s a mix of both. In any case, it seems clear that we remain culturally confused over the actual purpose of AI systems and what we should depend on them for in the first place.

No Replacement for Relationships

One of the problems of AI-human “relationships” is that, by definition, we cannot relate to a computer, nor can a computer relate to us. Lonely people certainly need friends around, but the road goes both ways. I might be in need of a friend to be there for me, but I also need to be a friend to the friendless. In short, for a relationship to work, both parties have to make sacrifices. To marry an AI bot, then, is a misnomer. It’s like marrying a mirror. I wouldn’t have to give up anything, and the bot has nothing to give up, since it’s not a person.

Let’s Talk Tools

Taibbi’s article was a response to a new essay from The New York Times by Ezra Klein, “How ChatGPT Surprised Me.” Klein praises the GPT-5 from OpenAI in his piece, relating the newest iteration of ChatGPT to the personal AI assistant Samantha from the dystopian film Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix.

And so, the challenge remains. Can we use AI as a tool and avoid depending on it as a substitute for human relationships? Since companies are morphing this new technology into all different kinds of try-on shapes, it might be hard to parse out AI’s genuine utility from its abuses. Maybe a good rule of thumb is to find real people to talk to, love, and be in community with. Personalized AI systems only make sense in a friendless society.