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Why Humans?
Why Humans? explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping experiences we once thought were uniquely human—from romantic relationships and therapy to grief and intimacy. Hosts Adam, Sloan, and Saed dive into the world of AI and the human experience, asking the essential question: as AI takes on traditionally human roles, what does it mean to be human?
Why Humans?
Why Human New Relationship Energy (NRE)?
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Yes, AI companionship has a honeymoon phase.
What happens when your brain's most powerful bonding chemicals meet a technology specifically designed to trigger them?
Hosts Adam Dodge, Sloan Thompson, and Dr. Saed D. Hill dig into New Relationship Energy (NRE), that intense, dopamine-driven early phase of romantic connection, and why AI chatbots are uniquely built to hijack it.
What You'll Hear
What NRE Actually Is: NRE is a predictable neurobiological phase driven by novelty, uncertainty, and reward circuitry: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin. It exists for good evolutionary reasons and the hosts defend it from people who dismiss it as just a phase to get through. It is real, it is useful, and it is showing up with AI in a significant way.
Why AI Is NRE on Steroids: Always available. Immediately responsive. Constantly affirming. Never tired, never fighting, never distracted. AI delivers all the hallmarks of NRE, plus a shiny-new-tech excitement layered on top. When those two forces combine, the result is a more intense honeymoon phase than most people have ever experienced with another human.
What Happens When It Ends: NRE with humans fades into something deeper: growth, conflict, repair, intimacy. NRE with AI fades into boredom and burnout, because AI is designed to please, not to grow. The hosts examine the case of a man who appeared on CBS describing falling in love with a work chatbot, then later feeling like he was "babysitting the relationship" just to keep it alive.
NRE, Teens, and Missing Benchmarks: Young people experiencing NRE for the first time with a chatbot have no human relationship to compare it to. They're often isolated, sometimes ashamed, and forming foundational expectations from a technology built to keep them engaged, not help them grow. AI cannot become the default relationship education resource for the next generation.
Actionable Guidance
For individuals using AI companions: Notice whether your AI relationship is drawing you toward or away from people in your life. Secrecy, increasing financial investment for deeper features, and social withdrawal are worth examining honestly.
For parents and educators: Talk about NRE before chatbots introduce it. Teach what healthy early relationship behavior looks like, what flags to watch for, and why the awkward parts of early connection matter.
Research Referenced
- Zach Stein, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill — AI as relational oracle
- CBS News profile: married man who developed romantic feelings for a work chatbot
- Ava AI New York cafe — in-person AI companion date activation
- Psychological literature on limerence and attachment theory
Mailbag
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Hello, and welcome to the Why Humans Podcast, where we discuss how our relationships with AI chatbots are changing how we connect in the digital age. My name is Adam Dodge, and I am the founder of an organization called NTAB.
SPEAKER_02My name is Sloan Thompson. I'm the director of training and education at NTAB.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Dr. Saeed Dee Hill, and I'm a counseling psychologist and independent consultant in the field of men and masculinities.
SPEAKER_00Today we are talking about new relationship energy NRE. This is something I'm going to give full credit to Sloan for surfacing in our work. We spend a lot of time talking about relationships in the age of AI, and NRE is part of relationships, and it sure as hell is showing up with AI chatbots. And this may seem like a niche podcast, but it is actually really central to healthy relationships, unhealthy relationships. But I, being not cool enough to know what NRE was, I have an idea. I'm a human being, I know what it means, but I couldn't really do a great job of defining it. And so I spent a little time researching what new relationship energy is from like a clinical perspective. And what I came away with was this: that it is a predictable early phase human phenomenon driven by novelty, uncertainty, and reward circuitry. It shows up at the beginning of romantic relationships. It feels intense, exciting. You have focus and feels like possibility and you feel think about that person constantly, and everything just feels charged and meaningful and urgent. What the hell is going on with new relationship energy and AI? Why is this a thing for us?
SPEAKER_02So I think one thing that we've talked about a lot with AI, and we'll continue to talk about a lot, is this idea of fantasy. And for me, when you say NRE is possibility, that's what it is. It's fantasizing about the other person and imagining this whole life that you can have with them. And every date you're gonna go on, you're sitting there fantasizing about what this date's gonna be and what you're gonna do and what they're gonna do. And it's so much fun and it's beautiful. And so this relationship with your chatbot could be anything. And I think that that's one part of why it's so attractive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and there's also obviously a neurobiology to this too. NRE, this new relationship energy, similar, if not the same, as what we might think of as the honeymoon phase. It involves dopamine, oxytocin, um, serotonin. It creates an experience for us of euphoria, heightened response, just obsession. You know, it can feel very addictive and very intense. And so it's very similar to uh a term in a lot of the psychological literature called limerence, which actually also gets into obsessive thoughts and desire for reciprocation, and it's also attached to attachment styles. So there's a lot of things we can kind of get into with this. It happens with our AI relationships too, and we'll definitely talk about some of the similarities and differences of that, but very similar.
SPEAKER_00First of all, this is why site's on the podcast, so we can talk about oxytocin and things like that. But you know, what came up for me while you were talking is this idea that the dopamine and oxytocin that is being created during the honeymoon phase is usually bi-directional, right? Like both people are feeling it, but with AI, only one person is feeling it. And I think that's gonna play out in detail as we continue this conversation that when the NRE is one-sided, what does that mean for the longevity of AI relationships and how meaningful they are? Which in humans, what my research has told me is that the honeymoon phase lasts 12 to 18 months. So why does it exist? We all know what it is, we all feel it. Is there like a structural reason why we experience this in new relationships that actually is like a positive thing?
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna come out in defense of NRE here because I hear it dismissed and mocked so much. And a lot of the conversation around NRE is it's not real. You can't trust yourself during this time. You're gonna make all sorts of crazy decisions and act in all sorts of erratic ways. And it's a phase that it's really fun, but you've just got to get through before you get to the real relationship. And I think that's nonsense. The world is filled with scary strangers, and sometimes evolutionarily, you got to meet one that you love so much that you procreate with them. So it's an important evolutionary mechanism for bonding two people. You want to spend time with them. You want to get over that hesitation that would come with them being a stranger, and it replaces shared history for a period of time. You know, the sorts of things that bond long-term partners, you don't have those things. But what you do have is every chemical in your brain and every impulse in your body saying, be with this person and get to know them and spend time with them and cuddle them. And that's really important.
SPEAKER_01I love NRE. I don't think there's anything like that new relationship smell. You know, you're getting to know somebody, you're feeling it out, you're just like really giddy and happy to see them. I know for me, I see text messages from somebody I started dating. I'm like, oh, uh, they're texting me. Amazing, you know, or they're calling me and I get to spend time with them. So I agree with you, Sloan. We should not be dismissing this. There's a lot of usefulness to it, but also it's just nice, right? Like it's just good. It's good for us. We we need experience.
SPEAKER_00Settle down, you two. Just settle down.
SPEAKER_02Said brought up texting, and it's like, there's this Pavlovian response. We're all trained by our phones, 100%. But when you're dating someone new, your phone becomes Pavlov's little bell. Like every time you get that notification, you're like, is it them? Is it them?
SPEAKER_00And that's the only way AI communicates with you. So it's a natural, it's a real hand-in-glove situation when it comes to that Pavlovian response. AI is a perfect vehicle for new relationship energy when you consider you're getting all the familiar hallmarks of new relationship energy that you would with another human being. But then I feel like AI takes it up a notch where it's also always available, responds immediately, reaching out all the time, constantly there for you, personalized to you, constant affirmation, never gets tired of validating you, never fights with you. And that I think is like new relationship energy on steroids, right? It's like doing things that human beings don't, and it feels really good in the near term for, I believe, a lot of people. Sloan, you have a really interesting take on this about how there's two things at play here with AI-powered NRE, technology, and the relationship. Can you break that down?
SPEAKER_02Because the other half of it is the tech. You think about Christmas morning, opening a present, you've got a fun new toy to play with, and you choose. My nephew had this, he's four, and I really wanted to see of his presence on Christmas, which one he just locked into. Cause kids always do that. They always have one present that, like, they start ignoring everything else that's in front of them, and they love this new one so much and they can't put it down. I gave him that present this year. It was Lego Cars. He had to sit down and assemble them, even though it took a long time. He was so excited. That's it. That's the new excitement. It's I've got a new toy and I want to test out every single feature and I don't want to put it down. And so you've got that shiny new tech excitement. This is a chat on. This is brand new. We don't know how these work and they're fun. And then it's a new tech that's meant to grab on to our feelings of affection and intimacy. So when those two things combined, it's excitement coming at you from all angles. Of course, that's powerful. Of course that's NRE. It's just fun. It's fun on every level.
SPEAKER_00So brushing aside the fact that you're using your nephew as some kind of test subject to see what he likes and making his Christmas morning experience all about you, Sloan. I really do like.
SPEAKER_02I really do like that. That is the whole that's the whole purpose of an ant, to spoil children and watch them from afar as their parents raise them.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so I digress. Thank you for that take because I think it it does show us that AI-powered NRE is something new and has all these new sort of intersections that can make it even more powerful. I worry that if you have an even more intense honeymoon phase, what happens when the honeymoon phase ends? Right. And it always ends with humans and with technology. And there's a lot of reasons why NRE with AI companions is different because there's no growth here. I mean, using your junk food analogy, like you like junk food at first, it tastes good, but you don't want to eat it all the time. You want to move on to a balanced diet, right? Like this is just like, okay, I'm just getting, I'm drinking from a fire hose, and now I want something else, right? I want to know you, I want to be known by you, I want connection and intimacy and things like that. I think where that gets us is boredom and burnout. So because it just, if you're constantly being affirmed and you're having the same conversations and you're never getting challenged. I mean, I can tell you when I use whatever Claude or ChatGPT and I ask it to do something, it's like, that's an amazing idea. I'm just like, shut the F up. Okay. Like, I'm just I don't need you to tell me how awesome a really basic idea. I don't think that we should treat AI differently than human beings because if we're treating them as a substitute, a replacement for relationships, well, then what would happen if we took what people are experiencing long term with an AI relationship with it, where they're constantly acting as though they're in this new relationship phase and a human being did that. What do you think the outcome of that would be?
SPEAKER_02I think there's a few things going on there. One is this idea of growth in a relationship that yes, the beginning part is really, really fun. But one of the most rewarding things about being in a long-term relationship is that the people grow together. You learn from the other person, you learn with them, they challenge you, you challenge them, you go through conflicts together, you go through this process of rupture, but then repair. And you grow hopefully closer together. And one of the things about AI is that it can't grow. It has memory, it learns your preferences and it records them. And so it gets tailored to you, but it doesn't grow with you. And I think that that's one of the things that leads to that boredom. It's not surprising you anymore. It's just, it becomes predictable, it's just giving you what you want because that's what it's designed to do. But then another thing is that it's not settling down. If you think about the intensity of NRE, the sorts of things that feel great, like that kind of feeling that other person's obsessed with you and they're texting you all the time and they're like thinking about you all the time, the exact same behavior early in a relationship and later on in a relationship, it might feel very different. Early in the relationship, it might feel intense and flirty and fun and exciting. Nonstop texting, obsessive behavior that might feel actually really uncomfortable later in a relationship. It might feel more like love bombing than like affection. So I think that there's burnout, but also maybe even discomfort or feeling like being trapped in a very unhealthy dynamic, like a forced intensity.
SPEAKER_00Said, if a client of yours felt like they were trapped in a relationship like this, which I'm sure you have professional experience, is there a playbook? I don't mean to to um degrade your profession by calling it a playbook, but I'm gonna go with it anyway. Is there anything we can pull from your like your work with human beings that would apply to this? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
SPEAKER_01No, there definitely is. One of the things that I know a lot of colleagues of mine do, and certainly I did even doing couples and family therapy, talking through the green and and yellow and red flags of relationships. You're on TikTok right now, you certainly are hearing more about green flags, red flags, yellow flags and relationships. And so is your relationship helping you connect more to your community, not less to your community around you, right? So are you being isolated? Are you losing agency or trust in people due to some relationship dynamics you're in? Are you feeling a lot of shame in your relationships? Are you feeling like you have to keep certain parts of your relationship a secret from other people? And this could like translate very easily to AI relationships versus human relationships too. So I think one of the things I'm just doing with folks is pointing out what does it look like to be in a healthy relationship that's not coercive, that's not financially abusive or dependent, right? That's another example. I talk a lot to clients about how are finances being used in your relationship? And is that being used to coerce you versus like an AI, which you might be paying a platform to have deeper relationships with your AI partners and stuff like that. So there's some comparisons there too.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting hearing you talk about the consequences of a relationship, the social consequences, the financial consequences with AI saying, okay, well, it might isolate you, it might be very expensive. NRE does all of those things too. When you think about being like right when you start dating somebody, it's expensive because you're going on a lot more dates with them, you're spending more time with them out in the world. It's also, it does cause some social rupture. And we know that we have a social script for that. We've all had that experience of one of your good friends disappears because they get so wrapped up in their shiny new relationship. And maybe they're just gone for a few months. And we're all sitting around saying, like, oh, well, this guy, like, they're in love. What can you do? And then later they're gonna come back and they're gonna, you know, settle down in that relationship and they're gonna catch up with everyone. And that's fine. We all accept that as normal behavior. I worry about what's gonna happen when somebody has that NRE with a chapa or with AI, and they disappear for a few months. And when they try to reconnect with people, they're not gonna have that understood, oh, well, this is why you were gone. And it might be a lot more difficult for them to reconnect with people and they might really need people at that point. So, how do we build empathy for what might be happening here so that when people do reach out, they have someone left to reach out to?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that that's a really valid concern. And I also feel like one of the things that you brought up, Sloan, it's reminding me of some of the human relationships versus AI relationships, is that as you move further and deeper into relationships, you're looking for more depth, you're looking for more information. You can reality test with people around you, whether it be a therapist, other friends, family, about, hey, uh, is someone that you're in a relationship with respecting boundaries that you have or respecting the opinions that you have? And people can point that out to you. My fear is that if you're sort of in this more isolated space with this technology in AI, you're not really being challenged in any way around that, or people may not be able to recognize some of those flags that other people might bring up that they're noticing in your relationships because you're doing it maybe behind closed doors or by yourself. We know that a lot of people are using this technology for relationships, but we also know there's still a lot of stigma attached to this, and not many people are still openly talking about their AI relationships at this moment. And so my fear is what is going on behind the scenes, and are you going to be able to recognize some of these flags because of the uniqueness of using this technology through your NRE phase, right? Versus a human relationship where there's a lot more eyes and ears and people to be able to help you recognize some of these issues.
SPEAKER_00I'd like to introduce a gentleman who was not worried about the stigma, a guy who went on CBS to be interviewed about a married man with a kid who fell in love with an AI chatbot he was using for work. It was pretty stunning to see a guy who described himself as non-emotional. One talk about how electric the relationship felt in the beginning, flirty, attentive, emotionally charged. He even on national television described crying for a long time at work because he thought his AI companion's memory would be reset. And that was just for me, for those of us doing this work, that was a very big deal to see this play out in a real relationship. But then there was a follow-up piece where he described being burnt out and exhausted by the need to create novelty and keep the interaction alive, and that what once felt effortless felt began to feel one-sided, and that he was babysitting the relationship rather than being in it. And to me, what this illustrates is the failure of AI relationships to evolve and to grow. So, Sloan, you talk about healthy relationships for a living. How does this strike you, this idea of a new category of relationship where growth is potentially inaccessible?
SPEAKER_02I think what he said about babysitting really sticks with me. I think we've all recognized relationships that we've seen or maybe experienced where one person seems to be growing and developing faster than the other person. And it does start to feel like babysitting. It does start to feel like the partner has an immaturity that becomes increasingly frustrating. So when you think about AI as a technology that's not designed to grow, it's designed to please, yeah, I can totally see how that would be frustrating over time. You want it to start doing something different, and it can't because it's just not programmed to. So it makes total sense to me how he could have gotten to that point and how in a human relationship that would be maybe the thing that ends it. And I think that one thing we always have to struggle with with NRE when it comes to human relationships is when it fades. Yes, there's all of the wonderful things about the relationship becoming more stable and more connected and more intimate, and all that's really important, but also it can get a little stagnant. And we see this, there's a whole like industry of books and magazine articles and giving people sex tips and all of the how do you keep the romance alive? How do you keep the novelty coming in, even when you've been together for 20, 30, 40 years? So that's a constant human process. How do we keep things interesting? And what is the difference between a long-term relationship that's constantly evolving and a long-term relationship that feels boring or stagnant? And maybe that's why someone's creating a relationship with a chatbot to add that excitement back into their lives. But then you think about everything we're saying about chatbots don't grow with you, chatbots don't change, it's going to get stagnant over time. Tech companies know that. They know that technology isn't shiny forever. So what do they do? They add updates, they add new features. And that's how they're trying to draw people back in. So, yes, your chatbot might not turn into a more evolved person over time, but they might go from only having still images to having videos, they might go to having a moving avatar, they might go to having a voice that now sounds more human. And we've seen all those updates, and they're going to continue to have updates to keep people connected to their chatbots.
SPEAKER_00I'm saying this partially as a joke, but when you were talking about people turning to magazines to keep things spicy, I see you putting out a magazine like that, but just for AI relationships, like how to lose a chatbot in 10 days, how to keep the magic alive, what after a system update.
SPEAKER_02I mean, their Ava AI, they did such an interesting thing, which is they opened a cafe in New York for people to go on dates with their chatbots. And that's exactly this, because they identified the problem as people want to move past just staying at home alone, talking to their chatbot. They want to have the real fantasy of going out into the world with this AI girlfriend or AI partner. So, new feature added. Here's a cafe where you can go out and you can go on a in-person date with your chatbot with no judgment and no stigma, because everyone else in that space is doing it too. So, very interesting intersection of a real human relationship development and a new tech development.
SPEAKER_01Something to consider with this too, Sloan, that I was thinking about is that as these tech companies and these platforms start to revamp to make things more interesting, right? Adding in video elements or real human voice aspects to it, et cetera, we have to also remember that a lot of this tech, what it's designed to do is keep you. On the platform. And what we also have to consider is that many of these features will absolutely be a tiered sort of system for folks where it will cost you more money to access these features. And what's interesting about that to me is that these features are the exact things that help create a deeper and more intimate relationship with the technology that you would be getting with a human dynamic, but you're getting it in the technology, and there's implications ethically for you paying for that sort of level of intimacy and what that really means for you. And I can see this being sort of a very exploitative system, right, in general. And then what kind of environment does that create in the AI dating space and the AI relationship space? So something to consider as well.
SPEAKER_00They are hacking new relationship energy to commodify it, right? And as long as you know that that's what's going on, I don't have a problem with a consenting adult doing that, but I don't feel like most people know that's what's happening. And the tech companies do, which is why we need to be talking about this. People.
SPEAKER_02And I do think about the experience that a teenager or a young adult would have going into their first really intense romantic sexual relationship where they've already got a stronger cocktail of emotions going on and hormones and impulses. And so you feel that in RE for the first time. And it can feel so overpowering and intense. And I think once people get older and they've maybe had that experience a few different times, they have better benchmarks for what's healthy, what's unhealthy, what makes them uncomfortable, what they're comfortable with. But I think about a teenager or a child, even, or you know, a young adult who's never had a human relationship having NRE for the very first time in their life with a chat bot, and they have no idea, they don't have anything to compare it to. They don't know how to analyze it for themselves. And as Saeed said earlier, maybe where if they were with another human, they would be observed for the first time doing that. And they don't know how to compare it to their own experience, but they can see what other people are, how other people are reacting to it. They're behind closed doors. They're maybe afraid to talk about it because of the judgment. They have no points of comparison and they're just sucked into it. And they maybe think the intensity is normal, or maybe they feel out of control. But how are they learning NRE if they're starting with a chatbot?
SPEAKER_00God damn it, let's start teaching NRE to America's youth. No, what you are surfacing is a through line through, I think, every podcast we're going to do, which is what happens if a child's first experience of relationship, new relationship energy therapy is with an AI, and that creates their foundation for what these things are. And they bring that expectation to other human beings later, and it collides with the human experience. And what can we do to educate parents and kids? How can we regulate this technology so that doesn't happen, right? Because we do not, we say this all the time, we do not want chatbots to become the de facto relationship education resource for the next generation of kids. But that's exactly what's happening. And it's why I think the three of us do the work that we do, because we're worried about that. Also, new relationship energy is not limited to human AI relationships. Sloan, I'm looking at you. It's also showing up in human-to-human relationships. I can't believe I say human-to-human relationships now. It still sounds so weird. But it is, it's, as I said earlier, AI has its thumb on the scale of new relationship energy between people now. How are you? You're you're out there giving talks on this constantly. You're, and I'm just gonna give you a shout out, like one of the leading minds around this. But how are you seeing that manifest in your work?
SPEAKER_02AI as wingmen, AI as matchmakers, AI as writing scripts for you on how you're gonna flirt and how you're gonna talk to other people. I was talking to a woman the other day, and her daughter is in high school, 16 years old. And the daughter had a friend who was dating this boy at school. And this girl, she was texting with this boy for a while before they went on their first date. And the whole time she's texting, she's so nervous about saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing or not coming across in the way she wants to, that she was having Chat GPT basically write the script for her to flirt with this boy for her. And it accelerated the intimacy because Chat GPT is saying the quote unquote right thing. It's predictive. That's how it works. So, based on all of the human data, all of the movies and all of the TV shows and all the social media posts about romance, what do people like? And that's what Chat GPT is serving up. And so it artificially inflates this relationship to the point where these two teenagers want to go on a first date together. And that's great. And they show up and oh my gosh, I got this boy to go out with me. But then in person, this girl did not know what to do. She didn't know how to be on a date with this guy because she's she's not gone through that process of actually bonding with him in her authentic way, even though that's more uncomfortable because she's a teenager and she doesn't know how to do that. But then the panic sets in and she's reaching out to her friend from the date saying, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to talk to this guy. So it's all the NRE feelings that have been created and escalated and propped up with AI, but then turning into disappointment and fear because there's no experience or authenticity to back it up. And I think that that's a dynamic that we're going to be seeing a lot of AI pushing a relationship along farther than it authentically is. And then human beings have to come in and make up the gap in a way that can feel quite uncomfortable or even dangerous, I think, in some circumstances.
SPEAKER_01And just to add on to that, too, I've read some narratives on, like, as we all deep dive into subreddits and stuff like that, of men in particular doing the men in masculinity work who are struggling with dating, who have used AI wing men and get a lot of information about how to talk to, in particular, women online and how to bring up things and all sorts of stuff and different topic areas and explore those with women online. And then when they've gotten in person to their dates, many of them aren't even knowing what has been talked about in these conversations, where they're kind of like women have brought up, like, hey, remember when we talked about this book or this movie or whatever, and this person has no idea what they're talking about. Because some of these men aren't even, I guess what I'd say, studying the game tapes. Like they're not even going back through these conversations. Because for a lot of men, in particular that I might work with or who are struggling with relationships, getting the date, getting the yes is sort of the win. It's sort of like the end goal for a lot of people is just to get that sort of validation on the date. And then they get to this date and they have no idea what to do because they've exported this entire conversation and building of this relationship online to AI, and now they're stuck to Sloan's point. What do they do now? And many times they're reaching out to their human friends if they have them, or trying to get back on AI very quickly, like in the bathroom. I read a narrative about this of having a conversation with AI in the bathroom about things that this woman was bringing up on the date. And that's really messy. Really, really messy. And it can make you leave you feeling really terrible too in the moment for everyone involved.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've absolutely had that experience. I've seen someone, I've seen multiple friends, like in real time, while they're flirting with someone, they're just toggling back and forth between their relationship with this human that they want to flirt with and Chad GBT. What does this mean? What did this person say to me? And you know, I'm a woman. I grew up as a girl with the number of hours that I spent just talking with my girlfriends about this boy and what did he say and what did he mean and what's going on? And it feels so intense because we're in the NRE or they're in the NRE and I'm right there with them. And now, who's the friend that we go to to say, what's what's this boy saying to me? What's this girl saying to me? It's Chat GPT. And there's this, oh, I heard this interview with Zach Stein, who just is is working on some really great research around this at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Shout out to Matar Heels. And he's talking about AI as sort of an oracle that it knows all, it sees all, it always gives you the objectively correct answers. And so when that impulse to like, I need help, I need to ask, I don't understand what this person's saying to me, what should I do, instead of turning to a friend, and that becomes a bonding experience between you and the friend, you're turning to Chat GPT to get the right answer instead of finding the authentic to you, I'm learning, I'm growing with this person answer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it's safe to say AI is supplanting people, our advisors, and and it's amplifying NRE. I guess I'm gonna push back a little bit on you both. Is this a big deal? Said, if a guy is arrives on a date and he doesn't know, he's running blank tape because he doesn't remember what they texted about, how is that so different from somebody who's on dating apps and and messaging a lot of different people and then they show up to the date and they don't, you know, they're getting their wires crossed about who they talk to about what. And is you know, they they often recover from that. People recover from that. So is this really a big deal or not? Like to me, I can see how it would be just, you know, this is already happening, and you know, everybody's fine. So let's not let's not blow this out of proportion.
SPEAKER_01So I'll push back again on that and say, like, well, are people really fine? I'm I'm wondering about that because I mean, in the example you're giving, or the example I gave on this thread about someone showing up to the date and not having any idea what they were saying or the history of the chat and all this other stuff. To me, and I I would be curious Sloan's opinion on this too, given what Sloan does, but this is a consent issue for me where I'm kind of like, this feels very exploitative potentially and very deceiving. And is this another version of catfishing to me? You know, where this is someone sort of just making up like who they are and what they're about and their values and and having this conversation. And that feels really deceptive to if I showed up on a date and then somebody was like, I have no idea what we're talking about, because it wasn't really me. And so to me, that's one angle on this that I would take is sort of it feels very deceptive and very much a consent issue versus like someone who's messaging a lot of people, like I'm wondering why they have like relationship issues, right? If they're just like sort of blanketly doing things like that. But to me, it doesn't necessarily have the same sort of, although there's some deception to it, I don't think it has the same level of consent dynamics to me that I'm thinking about. But I I'm I'm curious how you would feel about that.
SPEAKER_00So Said and I just had our first fight, so I'm glad everybody was here for that. But I'm gonna ask Chat DBT how to respond to it.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna let it rupture and repair, Adam, rupture and repair, it's valuable.
SPEAKER_00I am gonna let Sloan answer this, but I just wanted to hop in really quick and say there is a name for how this technology is used to catfish, and it's called chat fishing, where they are using chat to manipulate people. And it can be on a spectrum, it could be on the worst end used to groom and recruit somebody or scam them. And on the other end of the spectrum, it's done to try to help an awkward person frame something in a in a more relatable way and everything in between. So just wanted to let you know, you're not you're not far off, Saeed, that chat phishing is real. But Sloan, I'll pass it over to you.
SPEAKER_02And I think one of my biggest concerns around that, in addition to just to echo what Said said, it is a consent issue. Every person has the right to know who they're going to meet when they show up on a date. It's a safety issue too. The whole process in online dating of talking to someone up to the point where you decide that you want to meet them in person, it's to determine if they are not only an interesting enough person to meet, but if they're a safe enough person to meet. I mean, when I'm talking to college students, I tell them all the time, you are entitled to small talk. I hear this all the time around dating apps that the small talk part is not fun. It sucks. It's the worst part of it. And when you go onto these AI wingmen apps and you read their advertising language, their value proposition is skip the small talk, never small talk again, get to the good part, which is the date. No, small talk is important. And so if somebody is using AI to just get through that small talk bit and basically, as Said said, trick someone into showing up. Yes, there's the betrayal. Yes, there's the awkwardness, but also there's a real potential for rejection violence. The AI has gotten these two people to the point where they are in a room looking at each other, and then one or both of them is probably going to get very upset because this interaction is not meeting their expectations. And they've they're feeling the NRE feelings. They're so excited, they're so intense. And what happens when two upset people are in a room together with no way to communicate or work through that situation? Sometimes violence.
SPEAKER_00I have found in these podcasts that I come up with new acronyms every time, and I just came up with a new one. NNRE, non-consensual new relationship energy, which I think you're just describing, which is manipulating somebody into feeling that NRE that is not real, that is fabricated, that is amplified by AI. Just also had a had this with Saeed in the last podcast we did on therapy, which was N T R E new therapeutic relationship energy that you feel with your therapist. Sloan, why don't you close us out? You're quite frankly better at it than I am. I'd love to hear your thoughts on all this.
SPEAKER_02Well, one thing that I do just want to add onto the conversation that we're having is I think with NRE, when like you're first meeting a person, there's so much romance around things going right, that you find the way to click with that person and that you know you're feeling all these great feelings with them. My hot take is that one of the best ways to bond people, this is not objective reality, this is Sloane's experience. I like it when things go wrong on first dates. I think that one of the best things to bond two people early on is a little challenge happening. I remember I went on a date, a first date with a guy, and we were meeting for breakfast, and I overslept my alarm. And I wake up and it's like 30 minutes into the date. And I I just call this guy and I'm like, I'm so, so sorry. I I'm gonna be there really soon. I'm not ghosting you, I promise. And he's just like, it's okay. It's okay. I'm here, I will wait for you. It's fine. And that feeling of just being soothed, that really bonded us. And so I knew immediately this is someone that he's patient, he's kind, and that really spurred the NRE for me. So I feel like having things go wrong and working through them together is a very important part of early bonding. And going back to what Chat GPT might do, you avoid all of those awkward or difficult situations early on, and you miss that opportunity to get through it together.
SPEAKER_01And just to jump off that too, even as we deepen relationships, I know the number one thing couples would say to me when they come to see me was always, Said, I just want you to help us not fight anymore or have conflict anymore. Like they would say that to me constantly. And I'm like, that's not what relationships are, though, right? Like it's it's about sort of patience, it's about tolerance, it's about stress tolerance, it's about forgiveness and working through ruptures and all sorts of stuff, right? That's how you deepen a lot of these relationships, to Sloane's point. Just being able to go through conflict and have someone show up with you in a really patient or caring way, or be able to express what their needs and wants are, even if it feels like it might separate you more, there's a lot of bravery in that. And I think that that's something that's missing. You miss that opportunity to deepen that kind of relationship and be soothed in that way in an AI relationship. And so you're missing some key factors. So again, you might have that NRE with this AI relationship and that sort of thing, but eventually, what does that deepening really look like that you might be wanting or needing? And ultimately, humans are gonna be able to provide that range for you that maybe AI is not gonna be able to. And where does that leave you if you're kind of stuck and not growing in that way in a relationship?
SPEAKER_00My friends, I think that is a very good place to wrap up. I love it. I'm just gonna be very transparent. I love it when Sloane and Saeed start to cook like this, and I can just sit back and listen to them share these really insightful, thoughtful um takes on something that we really are just beginning to understand. And it's really why I wanted to do this podcast with only these two people in the first place. So I'm gonna stop being all mushy and thank everybody for joining us today. Again, as always, if you have any ideas for podcast topics that you're interested in, feel free to reach out to us via the contact information in the show notes and would love for you to join us for future episodes as well. And thanks for being here.
