When University of Wisconsin-Madison senior Emma needed advice on how to end a ‘situationship,’ she consulted a unique source. Emma typed information into Google Gemini and asked for help generating responses.
“If there's a conversation I'm having that I'm overthinking, I'll just put it into chat and ask what chat actually thinks about it,” Emma, who asked to use a pseudonym to keep her personal life private, said.
While Emma added that she does not typically make decisions off the prompts artificial intelligence bots produce in response to her personal problems, she found it helpful to use ChatGPT, Google Gemini and other generative AI tools to help process her feelings.
“I take the advice with a grain of salt. It's honestly just a good way to reflect on everything I'm saying,” Emma said. “In physically having to write out a prompt, I feel like that's kind of feeling it in its own way.”
“If you want to be validated, then that's like the place to go, because no one's ever gonna push back on you,” she added.
Emma is not alone. Studies estimate about a quarter of American adults have used generative AI chatbots for therapy advice. While chatbots can provide instant advice, there are multiple lawsuits against companies like OpenAI because those consulting AI chatbots have taken their lives.
While Emma consults AI bots frequently for personal advice, not all UW-Madison students are as open to using them in this way.
For UW-Madison freshman Ava Diener, something caught her eye on the Badger Bus back from Minnesota.
“The guy sitting next to me was having a full blown conversation with ChatGPT, which was not academically related at all, asking it for advice for 10 minutes,” she told The Daily Cardinal.
Diener felt it was strange to use AI socially like that. “When I saw him using it to conversate, I just thought that was so weird, because I’ve never had the urge to do that,” she said.
AI use has been a heated debate in academia, raising the question of whether it’s a tool or deterrent to learning. Now, it’s not just shaping a syllabus or study patterns — it's influencing how people interact.
The question, then, is if conversations with AI could ever become friendship, or are they actually preventing real, potential human connections?
Americans already lack human connection. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared a “loneliness epidemic” in 2023, with 1 in 2 Americans reporting they experience loneliness.
If Americans are lonely, does that warrant the social use of AI? Is it as weird as Diener thought, or is it resourceful — a cure for a condition many Americans are suffering from?
Understanding the loneliness epidemic
Some believe loneliness is ‘just a bad feeling,’ but this isn't necessarily the case. The surgeon general’s advice defines loneliness as “a subjective, distressing experience that results from perceived isolation or inadequate meaningful connections.”
A study conducted by Harvard’s Making Caring Common project typified the populations suffering the most from loneliness. They found people aged 30-44 were the loneliest age group, with 29% reporting they experienced loneliness. People aged 18-29 followed closely behind at 24%. But where is this loneliness coming from?
Harvard researchers found that many pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic or the rise of social media as explanations for the epidemic. While that may be true, Murthy notes these feelings were on the rise before the pandemic.
Devika Rao, a staff writer at The Week, attributes the increase in loneliness to the loss of “third places” — common locations designed for socialization.” She said it especially impacted young people.
When Harvard researchers asked participants what they felt was causing loneliness, 73% blamed technology. However, Rao said some find the internet has evolved into a digital third place where people can connect with each other. More recently, these connections have also taken place through AI.
AI as cure
AI is always available with internet access. Free forums like ChatGPT have even less barriers, not requiring an account for use. To the lonely individual, this can be attractive: a friend that will forever be at their side, whenever they need.
“It may prove hard to resist an artificial companion that knows everything about you, never forgets, and anticipates your needs better than any human could,” said Paul Bloom, staff writer at The New Yorker.
Researchers at Dartmouth studied how people were affected by receiving advice from therapist chatbots, or “therabots.” They found that people with mental health issues who were counseled by therabots experienced an overall reduction in their symptoms.
Simon Goldberg, a professor and core faculty member at the UW-Madison Center for Healthy Minds, was featured on the Mind & Spirit podcast briefly discussing AI’s potential for promoting well-being.
In reference to improving meditative practices, he said, “If we can train large language models in ChatGPT to respond to challenges that come up in people’s practice, we would actually trust the AI to respond in helpful ways.”
Goldberg said AI is often framed negatively even though it can have “some sort of human-feeling support built into it.”
AI as curse
When asked again about the student on the bus, Diener said, “if you just talk with AI, you learn how to talk to an automated response. You don't get the natural human interaction where you don't know what the person is going to say next.”
Bloom said AI’s companionship may hinder real human connection when overused. AI is a tool at its core, and its effects depend on how the user wields it.
UW-Madison freshman Maggie Hillesheim agreed. “It pisses me off because what do you mean we have this wonderful awesome tool and we’re using it in quite literally the worst possible way,” she said.
Bloom offers an interesting perspective. Rather than viewing loneliness as a condition to be cured, he describes it as a signal meant to prompt action.
“Loneliness is what failure feels like in the social realm; it makes isolation intolerable…The discomfort of disconnection, in other words, forces a reckoning: What am I doing that’s driving people away?” he said.
AI interaction can impede this process of self-reflection. It’s validating nature, which users have praised, can keep people in their comfort zone. Constantly comforted, they may not go out of their way to try new things.
Hillesheim said by relying too much on AI, people won’t “go out and make these connections…doing the scary uncomfortable thing, going out to a club meeting, going to volunteer, to a place you’ve never been.”
While AI may serve as a barrier to trying new things, the loss of third places makes this even harder.
Root cause: Disappearance of third places
The problem isn’t just digital and social, but spatial and cultural. Affordable third places are already rare as is, but current cultural norms are shaping how Americans behave in these spaces.
American culture emphasizes productivity and status. As a result, the few third places that remain often aren’t built to be welcoming. Rather, they are designed to discourage lingering — reducing the chances of interaction.
As a Catholic, Hillesheim said community structures like her Church have changed with the pandemic, social media and “the convenience of not having to go somewhere.”
Despite these changes, people crave this community. Harvard researchers note 75% of participants supported societal solutions like promoting community events and accessible, connection focused third places.
Hillesheim felt the UW-Madison campus has a lot of places students can go to to socialize without cost or transportation issues. Even so, she said an important part of being in a community is the willingness to be inconvenienced.
The answer
If the student riding the Badger Bus was lonely, temporarily entertained by AI, then its effect may have been positive.
Diener said she initially found AI hard to conceptualize as a cure. She recognized AI’s duality but said “I do think the bad things outweigh those benefits.”
For others, it provides insight. “It’s a good way to reformulate what I'm thinking,” Emma said.
The Center for Healthy Minds at UW-Madison is currently doing research on AI, along with scholars across the nation. As more findings emerge, the answer to whether AI is a “curse or cure” will become more definitive.
For now, that answer rests in our hands every time we open a chatbot.
Editor's note: Ava Diener is a staff reporter for The Daily Cardinal.
