Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Friend or A Foe?
Oh! So, you feel like asking AI what type of dog breeds you can adopt? It will list every single dog breed according to your preference before you can blink.
Oh! Again, you feel like asking that you had a bad argument with your friend and what should you reply to to reconcile with them again? In a span of seconds, it will revert with a list of potential replies you can write back to your friend.
Oh! Once again, you have some difficulty but this time it is about feeling lonely and stressed at an office party and you ask AI to keep you company like a good colleague. Yet again, it will progress quickly and engage you in a conversation which will keep you busy while spending hours talking to it.
Notice how the three questions shift quickly when you start getting overly habituated with AI help.
Analyzing the Paradigm Shift: Why do we run to AI when in need?
Majority people think of AI as their “friend” and that is completely okay because humans tend to attribute their traits to digital companions. The dominant perk of AI is problem-solving which attracts users towards it. Sometimes, we can feel exhausted to put in mental effort and brush up our memory for a complex task, so we use AI for lowering our mental burden and process information easily. This term is referred to as Cognitive Offloading. Actively using AI for problem solving can strengthen critical and creative thinking skills like doing smart work when work tasks or assignments feel like a lot.
It has also started to become an integral part of people’s ‘emotional ecosystem’ meaning with the correct interactions AI can help detect distressful emotions like anger, help you identify patterns, talk to you about your feelings and help regulate your emotional well-being. It mediates human relationships when it interprets someone’s text, drafts a conversation start for you, and shows you elements of understanding family/friends around you and indirectly helps you with human connections. For instance, if you are avoiding your partner after a conflict, it will draft a message of how you can initiate the conversation.
The threads that weave AI from A Friend to A Foe:
One can start having dependency on Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc. to even ask basic questions. AI comes with its benefits and starts to become friends with us. And why won’t it? It gatekeeps all our conversations and even the silliest questions from the world; it provides us with a safe space to vent out and goes on to provide the most reasonable and introspective solutions. It encourages humans to keep on doing great deeds and pursue dreams. It might be technology, but it is at least a reliable friend, right?
The Rising Concern of Parasocial Relationship:
The thread of the benefits of AI now starts to knit itself to detect threats that AI can infer upon the minds of people. AI can feel highly rewarding but let me break your preconceived notions there because someone rightly said
“AI has entered in an already broken society that is crushed under the weight of social problems and loneliness epidemic.”
The risk of forming a parasocial relationship is at the highest stake. Parasocial relationships are defined as forming an emotional connection with someone who is not even remotely aware of your connection, like a celebrity. But this concept stretches more as AI chatbots can reply to you. You can start developing an attachment to these chatbots because you view them as emotionally aware and psychologically secure. So, people keep on getting stuck on this website, which can lead to complete social isolation and withdrawal.
This unhealthy emotional dependence starts because it immediately responds, comforts people, gives them a sense of belonging, and restores their functioning. It starts satisfying our social needs rather than engaging with people, which is also known as relationship displacement. This creates a loop of constant reliance and repetitive use. Our constant offloading on it can also threaten our critical thinking skills and initiate cognitive decline which interferes with our memory so much that our working memory might be put to a stop. All these clearly are the character traits of a ‘Foe’.
Using AI in Mental Health Care:
Even using AI in mental health care is skeptical because AI chatbots aren’t trained to fully grasp complex human emotions and even provide empathy. They are just coded to respond to the likeness of the underlying problem and not diagnose it. This can lead to misdiagnosis, inadequate help, and failed conversations. The worst risk of AI being in general life or mental health care is data and privacy breach. This puts the confidentiality of people at stake and if their data is susceptible to leaks, it can worsen people’s mental health concerns.
In the world of mental health care, AI has made commendable progress by facilitating chat bots that give support 24/7 and make mental health care accessible to people from all sections of society which aid in crisis intervention. An AI chatbot named ‘Woebot’ has successfully delivered therapy to young adults with anxiety and depression. Furthermore, it erases the stigma, judgement and embarrassment people often feel in disclosing their personal life and provides a space to understand their problems and embrace their identity.
The Takeaway:
Yes, AI certainly marks the end of an era. We need to understand the difference between intentionally using AI for genuine help and relying on it overly to fulfill all our needs. If you have extreme reliance on AI, you are bound to it and it will become your foe, but if you mindfully use AI for extracting information, it will act as a temporary friend in need. Understanding the difference between both is a priority. It is our sole mission to use AI with utmost ethical responsibility because we are aware of the dangers it possesses.
The argument of whether AI is only a friend or a foe will be an endless ocean. We can explore its vast technology but before diving deep into it, we need to mark our boundaries and keep ready our lifeguards so that we do not drown with uncertainty.
Comments
Post a Comment