This tells us a lot about how the lives of an increasing number of human beings are so empty of social contact with other human beings that they need to enter into false relationships with chatbots governed by neural networks and statistical probabilities...
"More and more of us are using LLMs to find purpose and improve ourselves.
Therapy and Companionship is now the #1 use case. This use case refers to two distinct but related use cases. Therapy involves structured support and guidance to process psychological challenges, while companionship encompasses ongoing social and emotional connection, sometimes with a romantic dimension. I grouped these together last year and this year because both fulfill a fundamental human need for emotional connection and support.
Many posters talked about how therapy with an AI model was helping them process grief or trauma. Three advantages to AI-based therapy came across clearly: It’s available 24/7, it’s relatively inexpensive (even free to use in some cases), and it comes without the prospect of judgment from another human being. The AI-as-therapy phenomenon has also been noticed in China. And although the debate about the full potential of computerized therapy is ongoing, recent research offers a reassuring perspective—that AI-delivered therapeutic interventions have reached a level of sophistication such that they’re indistinguishable from human-written therapeutic responses.
A growing number of professional services are now being partially delivered by generative AI—from therapy and medical advice to legal counsel, tax guidance, and software development."
https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025?ab=HP-hero-latest-2
