For the past year, my partner has used either ChatGPT or Claude to help him make almost every decision. Need help writing an email? Claude links to a tool that does it for him. Need help negotiating a lease renewal? He puts it through A.I. for an answer. He talks to ChatGPT daily and feels it knows him better than he knows himself. He has discussed our arguments with it to understand them better.
At one point he struggled to get out of a work rut and wanted to regain excitement or hope in a bad job situation. We had several discussions and I gave him advice from my experience. Days later he said, “I was talking to ChatGPT and it made so much sense!” Then he repeated the same advice I had given him. He is sometimes on his computer for hours on end, and not really spending the quality time with me that I deserve.
I respect using A.I. to save time figuring out how to roast a chicken or finding information you need. Still, one reason I love my partner is his sharp mind and critical thinking. Using A.I. for every decision is something I don’t understand. I believe in using all your resources before turning to technology. Do the research, use real resources and think of a solution yourself.
Here’s my question: How do I go about telling my partner his reliance on A.I. is damaging our relationship? ChatGPT and Claude are so embedded in his life that I’m not sure how to approach the situation. — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist: There are lots of ways in which artificial intelligence, including the kind behind those chatbots, serves us well. (Bear in mind that A.I. is under the hood in all sorts of applications and features we don’t think of as A.I.: spam filters, route planning, credit card alerts, garden-variety internet search and on and on.) But it’s a familiar thought that new technologies lead to de-skilling, the erosion of capacities people used to cultivate. Socrates wasn’t wrong to worry that the widespread adoption of writing would take a toll on our powers of memory and attention.
Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: Writing brought advantages, too. And there are plenty of skills we can lose without much regret (shoeing horses, folding road maps). But one thing we surely don’t want to lose is a basic capacity for critical thinking. That would be an example of “constitutive” de-skilling — the loss of a capacity, like judgment or empathy or imagination, that’s central to our moral or intellectual being. You fell for someone who thought for himself; it’s understandable that watching him outsource that mind to a machine could dim his appeal.
In “On Liberty” (1859), the British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, about someone who has his own “plan of life,” that “he must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.” So one risk in downloading deliberation to a machine is that your life will, in a certain sense, cease to be yours, because it won’t be your reasoning and judgment that guide it.
There’s another risk in what you describe. By letting his conversations with the bot supplant actual conversations, your partner is degrading his relationships with real people. It sounds as if he may have lost sight of the fact that a large language model isn’t a person. You’ve reported an episode of what might be called “botsplaining”: hearing your own good advice repeated back to you with the authority of a machine. But it also suggests he values his time with the chatbots more than his time with you. It’s understandable that you’re feeling crowded out. Be direct with him about how you feel. What’s clear is that he’s brought a third party to this two-person relationship, and it’s talking too much.
There are two main aspects of this I’d like to bring up. The first is regarding:
Are you certain this wasn’t him just saying “I went and ‘researched’ your advice and I understand it now” and demonstrating this understanding by repeating it to you but in his own wording? One of the few upsides of LLMs is being able to ask a whole bunch of small “silly” questions which some may otherwise not want to do out of fear of ‘bothering’ others.
The second is how is his social life outside of your relationship? If it’s lacking, this might be the best angle to approach it from. One of the more common themes in news articles that document the variety of different spirals people going down regarding LLMs, is that said person was typically feeling lonely or isolated (yes, quiet a few of them were married/had partners). So may be worth considering stating that you’re concerned about him substituting real, personal relationships with an LLM (designed to respond in a manner to ensure continued subscription). Which can, and has been, detrimental long term.
Lastly, I know cost is often a factor but I feel it’s important to suggest, taking this to a relationship counsellor and asking them the same question is definitely worth considering as well. Either way, it’s worth remembering that it’s valid to be concerned about people we care about, and if his reaction is negative, that’s his choice.
In my case, it’s been really hard to find anybody (in terms of couples therapists or outside of Lemmy) that even really understands AI dependency since it’s such a recent phenomenon (but I’m pretty sure issues like this will be happening more frequently over the next year).
I don’t suppose you live near a university? Even if not, asking GPs for a referral you may find someone, though it may require seeing a couple different GPs. The AI portion of it is recent, but I think the root cause has been a brewing problem for a minute (increasingly isolated society in the age is social media and specifically the male loneliness epidemic). If you do struggle to find someone able to counsel the AI portion of it, even just attempting to address the loneliness/socialising aspect of it could be very beneficial.
I’m certain you’re right, I have a guardian article saved that specifically has a man go through similar issues, the article points to loneliness/isolation towards the end. The saga cost the bloke his marriage (and a lot of money). It’s a very real problem and not the first article of its kind I’ve read.