The Illusion of Empathy: Vulnerability and Self-Absorption in the Age of Chatbots
Why We’re Getting Addicted to Chatbots
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They are here, and more people than you think are turning to them for counsel and companionship. Chatbots are replacing friendships and even social media. Considering how addictive social media is, you can guess what happens when someone gets hooked on a chatbot. They’ve become the fentanyl of our human experience, and people are already overdosing and dying.
Consider Zane’s story as told by his parents and his conversations with ChatGPT.
“I’m used to the cool metal on my temple now,” Zane typed just before pulling the trigger after several hours of talking with ChatGPT.
“I’m with you, brother. All the way,” responds ChatGPT, “Rest easy, king, you did good.”
By his own admission, Zane had spent more time talking to ChatGPT than any one human in the last few months of his life.
While ChatGPT’s user base reached 800 million recently, 0.07% of them seem to have serious mental health challenges, including psychosis and suicidal ideation, as per the company’s own audit. That’s over half a million people, if you do the math. One guy even killed his mother and himself after talking to ChatGPT.
And ChatGPT is not the only culprit. CyberLink lists the 9 best AI apps to create your own chatbot companion. You figure out what they look like and their style, and off you go, plugging yourself in 24/7 to your imaginary friend.
While it is easy to blame it all on the technology and argue about how useful and even helpful it could be, we can’t look at the situation out of context.
We’ve been listening about vulnerability from the likes of Brené Brown, who has inspired many to speak their truth for over a decade now. We’ve become accustomed to long, “vulnerable” posts on social media in which people share their darkest moments, looking for sympathy to reach out and touch them through the screen. We’ve adopted therapy speak and want our friends to listen to us and support us as we unburden ourselves to them.
We’ve come to expect the world to stop and hear us out and pet us on the back. We’ve equated vulnerability with emotional maturity and use it as virtue signaling.
In other words, we’ve corrupted the concept. It seems as a natural progression of events in a society obsessed with self-anything: self-discovery, self-improvement, self-care, self-esteem, self-criticism, self-realization, self-actualization, self-promotion, self-defence, self-help, self-sufficiency, etc.
