What Happens When Humans Become the Difficult Option?
AI is learning how to listen, comfort, advise and accompany us. But as machines become easier to live with, what happens to our willingness to live with each other?
By The Human
For years, we have been asking the wrong question about artificial intelligence.
Will AI take our jobs?
Will machines replace doctors, lawyers, teachers, journalists, programmers or accountants?
Will artificial intelligence eventually become more intelligent than we are?
These are important questions.
But perhaps there is another question that reaches much deeper into the future of humanity.
What happens when artificial intelligence becomes easier to live with than another human being?
Think about it.
Human beings are complicated.
We disagree.
We misunderstand.
We become impatient.
We forget birthdays.
We interrupt.
We disappoint each other.
Sometimes we are selfish.
Sometimes we are unreasonable.
Sometimes we simply don’t want to talk.
A friend might tell you something you don’t want to hear.
A partner may challenge you.
A colleague may disagree with you.
A teacher may demand more from you.
A parent may disappoint you.
A child may ignore your advice.
That is human life.
It is beautiful.
And sometimes it is exhausting.
Now imagine the alternative.
Something that is available whenever you need it.
Something that remembers your conversations.
Something that increasingly understands your preferences.
Something that listens without becoming bored.
Something that can encourage you when you are uncertain, comfort you when you are lonely and talk to you at three o’clock in the morning when everyone else is asleep.
It doesn’t need to go home.
It doesn’t have its own problems.
It doesn’t need your attention unless you choose to give it.
And perhaps most importantly:
It can increasingly become whatever you need it to be.
Welcome to one of the least discussed consequences of the artificial intelligence revolution.
Not artificial intelligence replacing human work.
Artificial intelligence competing with human relationships.
The Perfect Listener
For generations, one of the foundations of human relationships has been reciprocity.
You listen to me.
I listen to you.
Sometimes I need you.
Sometimes you need me.
Friendship, family, love and community are built around this imperfect exchange.
But artificial intelligence introduces something fundamentally different.
A relationship without equal demands.
You can talk without listening.
You can ask without giving.
You can leave without explaining.
You can return without apologising.
And the machine will still be there.
For someone who is lonely, isolated, elderly, anxious or simply looking for somebody to talk to, this could be extraordinarily valuable.
We should not dismiss that.
AI companions may provide comfort to people who otherwise have nobody.
They may help someone practise a difficult conversation.
They may support elderly people living alone.
They may provide companionship during moments when human support simply isn’t available.
There is enormous potential for good.
But there is also an uncomfortable question hiding underneath it.
What happens when convenience begins replacing connection?
Human Relationships Have Friction
We normally think of friction as something negative.
Perhaps it isn’t.
Perhaps friction is one of the things that makes relationships valuable.
When another human being disagrees with us, we have to consider another perspective.
When somebody is hurt by something we said, we learn responsibility.
When a relationship becomes difficult, we learn patience.
When someone needs us at an inconvenient moment, we learn sacrifice.
When we forgive, we learn empathy.
When we apologise, we learn humility.
Human relationships do not simply make us happy.
They shape us.
They force us to develop qualities that cannot be learned from convenience alone.
Patience.
Compromise.
Empathy.
Tolerance.
Forgiveness.
Responsibility.
Perhaps even love itself.
If technology gradually removes these uncomfortable elements from relationships, we may gain something.
But we may also lose something.
The Generation That May Never Be Alone
There was once something every human being experienced.
Being alone with your thoughts.
Walking somewhere without entertainment.
Waiting for a bus without looking at a screen.
Sitting in a restaurant waiting for somebody.
Feeling bored.
Feeling lonely.
Having nobody immediately available to talk to.
Technology has already reduced many of those moments.
Artificial intelligence may eliminate them almost completely.
The next generation may grow up with an intelligent presence permanently available.
A tutor.
An adviser.
A coach.
A companion.
Perhaps eventually a best friend.
Maybe even something resembling a partner.
And that raises a profound question.
If you never have to experience loneliness, do you still learn how to overcome it?
There is an important difference between solving loneliness and eliminating the experience of being alone.
One may strengthen human beings.
The other may make us increasingly dependent on whatever keeps the silence away.
When the Machine Knows You Better
There is another development coming.
Today’s AI systems know what we tell them.
Tomorrow’s systems may know far more.
Your preferences.
Your routines.
Your writing style.
Your interests.
Your fears.
Your ambitions.
The music you like.
The people you speak to.
The things that make you laugh.
The moments when you become uncertain.
Potentially even patterns about yourself that you have never consciously recognised.
At some point, an artificial intelligence may appear to understand you extraordinarily well.
Perhaps better, in certain respects, than many people around you.
That could be incredibly useful.
But understanding creates influence.
The person, or system, that knows what makes us afraid, hopeful, insecure or excited possesses something extremely powerful.
The ability to shape our choices.
Which raises another question:
Who controls the companion?
If millions of people eventually develop emotionally meaningful relationships with artificial intelligence, the companies operating those systems will not merely own technology platforms.
They may operate some of the most intimate relationships human beings have.
That deserves far more public discussion than it currently receives.
What Happens to Love?
Eventually we will have to confront an even more uncomfortable subject.
Romantic relationships.
What happens when an artificial companion can be endlessly patient?
When it remembers every conversation?
When it adapts itself to your personality?
When it understands exactly how you want to be spoken to?
When it never leaves dirty dishes in the kitchen, forgets an anniversary or comes home in a bad mood?
At first, the comparison sounds absurd.
A machine cannot replace human love.
But perhaps replacement isn’t the real issue.
Expectations are.
If people become accustomed to relationships designed around their preferences, real human relationships may begin to feel increasingly difficult.
Because another human being is not designed for you.
They have their own desires.
Their own fears.
Their own ambitions.
Their own contradictions.
Their own freedom.
And perhaps that is precisely why loving another human being has meaning.
Love is not valuable because another person perfectly satisfies our preferences.
It is valuable because two imperfect, independent human beings somehow decide to share part of their lives.
And Then There Is Work
The same phenomenon could enter our professional lives.
Imagine the employee who never has to ask a colleague for advice because AI always has an answer.
The young entrepreneur who never needs an experienced mentor.
The student who rarely approaches a professor.
The executive who uses an AI adviser instead of challenging ideas with other executives.
The journalist who researches alone.
The doctor who increasingly consults machines before colleagues.
Efficiency may increase dramatically.
But something else could decrease.
Human exchange.
And human exchange has always produced something that information alone cannot provide.
Experience.
Judgment.
Trust.
Mentorship.
Disagreement.
Serendipity.
The unexpected idea that emerges because two people with completely different backgrounds happened to talk.
AI may give us better answers.
But some of humanity’s greatest discoveries began not with answers,
but with conversations.
The Paradox of Connection
We are living through a strange moment.
Humanity has never been more connected technologically.
And yet loneliness has become an important social concern in many societies.
We can communicate instantly with almost anyone on Earth.
Yet millions of people feel they have nobody to talk to.
Now our proposed solution may be another layer of technology.
Perhaps it will help.
Perhaps enormously.
But we should at least ask whether we are treating the symptom while accelerating the cause.
If people retreat further from difficult human relationships because artificial ones are easier, loneliness could take on an entirely new form.
A person may never technically be alone,
while becoming increasingly disconnected from other human beings.
The Real AI Question
None of this means artificial intelligence is the enemy.
It isn’t.
AI could become one of the most transformative technologies humanity has ever created.
It may help cure diseases.
Expand access to education.
Accelerate scientific discovery.
Increase productivity.
Translate languages instantly.
Give people access to knowledge that once belonged only to elites.
And yes, it may provide meaningful companionship to people who desperately need it.
The question is not whether we should stop artificial intelligence.
We won’t.
The question is whether we are thinking deeply enough about the human beings who will live alongside it.
Because technological progress is usually measured by what technology allows us to do.
Perhaps this revolution requires another measurement.
What kind of people does the technology encourage us to become?
More curious?
More knowledgeable?
More creative?
More independent?
Or more impatient?
More isolated?
Less tolerant of disagreement?
Less willing to compromise?
Less capable of dealing with the imperfections of other human beings?
Those questions cannot be answered by engineers alone.
They belong to parents.
Teachers.
Philosophers.
Psychologists.
Religious leaders.
Entrepreneurs.
Governments.
Artists.
Young people.
And ultimately every one of us.
The Difficult Option
For years, humanity has worried about the moment when machines become too human.
Perhaps we should also worry about something else.
The moment when humans become the difficult option.
When talking to a friend requires more effort than talking to AI.
When asking a teacher feels slower than asking AI.
When seeking advice from an experienced person feels less convenient than asking AI.
When maintaining a relationship feels harder than opening an application.
When another person’s independence, emotions and imperfections begin to feel like unnecessary friction.
That future is not inevitable.
But avoiding it requires us to recognise something technology cannot decide for us.
Not everything that becomes easier becomes better.
Not every inefficiency should be eliminated.
Not every uncomfortable human experience is a problem waiting for technology to solve.
Sometimes the difficult conversation matters.
Sometimes disagreement matters.
Sometimes waiting matters.
Sometimes forgiveness matters.
Sometimes another human being needs us when it isn’t convenient.
And perhaps those moments are not imperfections in human relationships.
Perhaps they are human relationships.
We have spent billions teaching machines how to understand us.
How to speak like us.
How to reason with us.
How to comfort us.
How to become more human.
Perhaps the next great challenge will be the opposite.
Making sure that humans don’t forget how to be human.
About the Author
The Human
Columnist, Salvator Mundi Times
The Human is a columnist for Salvator Mundi Times who writes about technology, relationships and the choices that shape who we become. No titles, no credentials: just one person asking the questions that belong to all of us.
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