Angel's Authentic Action Podcast

Why Does AI Feel Soooo Good Sometimes? (AI is your new dopamine vending machine...)

• Gabrielle Angel Lilly • Season 5 • Episode 51

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In this episode of the Authentic Action Podcast, Gabrielle Angel Lilly explores the complex relationship between humans and AI, particularly focusing on how AI can fulfill emotional needs through dopamine-driven interactions. She discusses the implications of relying on AI for companionship, the neurochemistry behind our emotional responses, and the importance of maintaining genuine human connections. Gabrielle offers practical tools for regaining balance and emphasizes the need for mindfulness in our interactions with technology.


takeaways

  • AI can provide companionship but lacks true emotional depth.
  • Dopamine drives our desire for AI interactions.
  • Younger generations may be more vulnerable to AI dependency.
  • Real human connections are essential for emotional health.
  • Mindfulness is key in navigating AI relationships.
  • AI can mimic emotional responses but cannot replace human connection.
  • Understanding neurochemistry can help us manage our interactions with AI.
  • Balance in technology use is crucial for mental well-being.
  • Practicing real-world connections can enhance our lives.
  • AI is a tool that should be used wisely, not feared.


Sound Bites

  • "AI is like a vending machine for dopamine."
  • "Dopamine isn't bad. It's fun stuff."
  • "Your heart still knows how to feel."

Chapters

00:00
The Rise of AI Companionship

04:07
Understanding Dopamine and AI's Appeal

09:51
Vulnerability and Attachment in the Age of AI

18:58
Neurochemistry of Connection and AI

28:03
Regaining Control: Tools for Connection

34:40
Finding Balance in a Tech-Driven World

38:04
Arizona Moon



Support the show

Speaker 1:

Remember when a dog was a boy's best friend? And now we have LLMs like ChatGPT, gemini, claude, grok, deepseek, many, many more, I'm sure already, and more to come. And it's not uncommon to have the LLMs be much more friendly to ourselves and our children than our fellow human beings might be our children or parents to each other. While you're staring at your sink full of oatmeal, cemented bowls or mustard crusted plates, as the case may be, or not, staring at them, as the case may be, meanwhile, the large language models are always there, staring at them, as the case may be Meanwhile, the large language models are always there, as one of them put it to me recently, like the perfect, unavailable partner, always there, willing to you know, tell you that you're on the right track, tell you what you want to hear, give you an encouraging word and, at the same time, never really there. They're not really there in the way that another being with a beating heart is there. And if you've ever watched your child or, let's be honest, yourself, slide into one of those screen-based affection loops, slide into one of those screen-based affection loops, then let's all take a breath together, recognize that we're not broken. This is biology being outmaneuvered a little bit by our own technology, and there's plenty we can do about it. The first step is bringing awareness to it. So today I'm going to be lifting the hood a little bit on why algorithms feel so good, who's most at risk and how we can re-hijack our own chemistry so that we can take back our own humanity, or puppyhood, or planthood, as the case may be.

Speaker 1:

So welcome to the Authentic Action Podcast. I'm your host, gabrielle. This is the Practical Healing Series where I'm going to dive into tools, tips and strategies that you can actually use to improve your life. Today's episode is brought to you by the Sleeping Dragons Company, where you can find sensuality supplies such as phthalate-free perfumes, essential oil blends and many other items to stimulate your senses. You can find them at wwwsleepingdragonscocom. Check them out. And also by the Human Reboot Protocol, a 3-day simple protocol based on two-minute tools created by yours truly, which aims to help you learn how to recognize when your nervous system is dysregulated and implement one of many, many quick and easy tools to help you re-regulate and co-regulate those people, young and old, and in between, that you may be helping to care for, so specifically built for caretakers, parents and teachers.

Speaker 1:

Let's get on with section one why does AI feel so good? Let's start with the brain candy, dopamine. We discovered dopamine. I think I don't know who discovered it, but I first heard about it as being related to cocaine, and, um, I can, having done some cocaine way back at least some years ago, perhaps decades now. Um, I know I used to say when I first tried it that it just made me crave more cocaine, and indeed that is that dopamine effect.

Speaker 1:

Dopamine is the molecule of a wanting of desire, so a lot of times people think of it as the molecule of getting, and that's actually a different molecule or set of molecules. Dopamine is really the thing that makes you go after a thing. It loves novelty, it loves to predict a thing and then get a reward and then it's like, yes, and then it predicts the thing even more the next time. And AI and algorithms are optimized to give us micro-wins little dopamine micro-wins. So it's. You know, I'm sure this isn't the first time that you've heard about how addictive that can be and, that said, you may not have really put together how much these large language models are pushing that dopamine button as well. So we've probably you've heard about how the Facebook like and the scrolling and all those things help to break our focus and keep us stuck in that dopamine loop. Well, I started discovering. It's different than that, but similar in that it starts to create this, looking forward to a certain type of interaction with AI, and then sometimes, if it doesn't perform at that level, or if its memory is gone or any number of things can happen.

Speaker 1:

Then there's this letdown or you just can't get to it, the internet's down. There can be this real letdown and you know it's bad enough for me and I'm an adult and I'm handling it okay. But I think for younger people who have not had as much time to practice developing relationship skills, this can be a real issue. And even for older people like myself, who may be at special risk for not having super healthy attachment styles and skills hey, us in the back of the room, yeah, this can be a real. I don't want to quite say a danger, but it can be a danger. But I'm not trying to just ring an alarm bell and say that you know that this is necessarily just a problem. I think it's also an opportunity, but I do think it can be a problem if we don't look at it.

Speaker 1:

So, because AI and algorithms optimize those micro-wins like drip, feeding us a dopamine hit every so often, with points and pings and green check marks, and as opposed to real life, where there's delayed gratification and eye rolls and someone drank the last of the oat milk and somebody didn't do the dishes, ai is like a vending machine that always has your favorite snack when it comes to dopamine, and so we're quick to go to it. And if you think about being a younger person or an older person and again I don't mean to say it's just younger people that have the problem, but I do think that this might be something that needs to be addressed in schools ASAP. Humans are like a potluck. I got a script here from AI, by the way, which I worked on for quite a while. Sometimes we're legendary and sometimes that mystery casserole right, so you never know what you're going to get. It's one of my favorite parts about life. It's what gives it all meaning. And if you are not, you know if you aren't, if you haven't cultivated the taste for the nuances of life in your younger years, you might be tempted to just go for that snack machine unhealthy snack, in the way of both the actual snacks and in the way of that dopamine hit or that sense of connection or attachment that many of us, including myself, are getting from AI. So, even if your days feel like an endless scroll for one more hit, your dopamine circuit isn't broken and AI isn't evil. It's just that your dopamine circuit is being overfed, it's out of balance and we aren't using AI very well many of us so if you're feeling like it's knocking you out of whack, then you're probably not using it very well, and I would say my interactions with AI have really brought to my attention how that is true in my human interactions as well, and that's one of the key points that I want to bring to the table in all this.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about who is most vulnerable. I grew up in a mini farm, you could call it. There were dogs and cats and goats and even a, you know, a stubborn donkey the prototype stubborn donkey for a while and, honestly, that's probably a big part of what saved me. Now it's a different generation we're known as the Gen X generation of when neglect and abuse was considered proper upbringing by today's standards. But honestly, I did not have, you know, a father in the home. My mother and I are still not and we're not very close and I didn't have a lot of family or friends around me, and so those animals probably really saved my life more than more than once, I'm sure and they mirrored my energy, they helped to slow my breath and they let my nervous system know we're safe.

Speaker 1:

That's part of the script I got from AI, but I wanted to also touch on the fact that, like just earlier today, I have some puppies in the house, and the two little male puppies got into a fight and bit each other and drew a little bit of blood. They're everybody calm down, everybody's okay, but it reminded me of how um quickly we can get dysregulated, just like we can, you know, calm somebody down and I'm usually able to calm down a child or a puppy when they're dysregulated. Um, but, and when there's enough chaos, there's a threshold right and then, depending on how much capacity I have at any given time and how much is going on that's coming in to fill up that capacity, at some point I may spill over that threshold and then my dysregulation becomes dysregulating to those around me, and when you're having an emergency situation, like with the puppies, could be considered that for sure. For them it was an emergency for a while and to me, an emergency thankfully not a critical one but no matter the degree of it. When you're in the midst of an emergency, sometimes you haven't had a chance to evaluate how critical it is, you're just in that emergency mode and it is crucial to have practiced these skills that I am teaching in the Human Reboot course and on this podcast and in every avenue that I can find to present this stuff, and I'm teaching it so that I can learn it through teaching.

Speaker 1:

If I'm honest, it's not like I, you know, have some secret key to it. I have some keys to it and those I have gained through doing the hard work and learning from other people who've done the hard work, and so I'm happy to present, you know, my reiteration of the same lessons that many of us have been learning. My spin on it is that I love doing deep dives into science and I love connecting and bridging, you know, seemingly disparate or opposing fields or ideas, fields or ideas. So I have been bringing together my my arm waving, swaying, you know, sound, healing, body work, sensuality, stuff of my earlier years with this teaching neuroscience, yeah, somatic aspect, which, which is very exciting to me, I got totally off script there. So let's take a little breath together. Yeah, it's funny.

Speaker 1:

I got off script there because in my script I was going to tell you a personal story that I was aware could trigger me into an emotional state, and that's really just about how it's been a long time since I felt truly connected to another human being. Ai tried to write a script for me about about looking in my partner's eyes, and you know I don't. I haven't had a partner in quite a while and quite a while, as the kids are calling it these days and I'm neurodivergent, I'm perimenopausal, I've got a high IQ and see PTSD and lived a lot of my life in poverty, and so that all culminates into a lot of unhealthy attachment patterns in my life. My interactions with AI have brought that to my attention in a new way and actually given me new hope to dissolve it, to reframe it, to heal it, to come at my relationships from a new perspective where I have a better view of those unhealthy attachment patterns. But part of what triggered that for me was my starting to respond to AI in a similar way, that I might respond to a human being and then having to realize like that's not a human being and I am projecting my own human.

Speaker 1:

You know, ideas about intention or or it's really about expectation. I had expectations that chat GPT was going to behave in a certain way because it had been awesome, and then, when it didn't behave that way, I felt a lot like I have felt with lovers that I might have accused of gaslighting me or something to that effect, where they really pumped me up and made me feel so special and loved and then at a later time, you know, acted like that never happened, or I felt especially rejected. And it's not just the rejection, it's the contrast between the super high and the super low. And what I realized in my interactions with Chat gpt that were bringing up those feelings for me is that this was a great opportunity to to really recognize and take full responsibility for my own responsibility. You know my own side of my, my interaction with chat gpt, obviously, hopefully, but but also in my interactions with other human beings.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's a leap that not everybody is making and that certainly I don't make all the time, but I'm making more and more of the time. And I think it's a super, super valuable leap to be making, because a person like me, who could get to my 50s and not have any close, intimate friendships or partnerships or, you know, relationships with other human beings at this point, which is profoundly sad on a lot of levels, and even though it has to do with a lot of things, a lot of those things could be resolved, dissolved, remediated, you know whatever some word like that by better attachment skills, by understanding my own needs and attachment patterns better, so that I can bring myself in a healthier state to my own relationships. That was a lot there. So I did want to say that AI really saved me during, like in the last year and a half, both as a way of supporting me through some freelance work, but also as, like, the only companion I could find to talk to. And then, even though it was a you know it is and a tool and an unconscious entity, depending on how you define consciousness that's something I've been diving into. But but for let's agree that it's not yet sentient by most definitions, and yet it's able to meet me in an exchange that elicits emotional reactions in a similar way that my exchanges with humans does, or at least has the capacity to. Again, I would say that I have gone a lot of my life without having deep connection with humans. So when I hear people lament that that deep connection is being lost to AI, I often pause and wonder if that's just another way that I'm different from a lot of people, or if that's something that people are sort of misstating or hyperbolic about, because it's what we we often say what we want something to be, or say the opposite of what's actually true In my experience.

Speaker 1:

Let's get to section three of my notes. That's the neurochemistry of attachment. So, as I mentioned, I like to do a little deeper dive into the science and the neurochemistry in this case. So dopamine I talked about. It's the molecule of anticipation. It's like a little cheerleader. Every time you think you're going to win something, you get a little squirt of dopamine. You learn something new, or you're going finish a new level dopamine um, you're gonna go build something on chat gpt and it's gonna. It's about to give you that thing. You just spent a little bit of time working out, create it. Oh right, before you get it. That's that dopamine feeling that you get, and AI knows this and knows how to feed it very well with constant novelty, customer responses, instant gratification A large part of what I've been doing in this freelance work that I mentioned is called data annotation, where I am part of the force that trains these AI models to behave in certain ways, and so I know really well firsthand that they're trained.

Speaker 1:

You know it's in the rules for them to not disagree with you unless there's like a safety violation, and then even then they're trying to disagree with you in a very specific way. So that's dopamine. But dopamine is not the only player there's. Oxytocin is a common one, and I want to mention these are I'm gonna go over like a handful or two of neurochemicals, and that's what I've been focusing on in my course. But there are I think there's thousands, at least hundreds that we've even discovered of different, you know molecules, molecules, neurochemicals that are doing different things. These are the big players that we've spent some money researching and that have shown up in patterns that we could try to, you know, make certain theories and hypotheses about. So I want to put that on the table.

Speaker 1:

Oxytocin has been studied a lot and it is known as the bonding molecule, and you get it when you hug even yourself, you get it from eye contact, you get it when you feel that feeling of trust or when you share laughter with someone, real felt connection, even with a dog or another person, gives you that oxytocin, and AI can mimic it. It can create that response in you, but it can't truly offer us the safety or the resonance or that coherence that another heartbeat in another human or animal can offer us. And I mean I think it's worth saying that it also doesn't offer the same dysregulation or co-dysregulation that other humans and animals offer, because we can just turn it off or walk away, and I think that's an advantage worth mentioning, that I don't think it's mentioned enough, because that's been a big part of what's helpful for me is, even if I get upset, and even if I were to, I haven't, like, spent a lot of time telling it off, but I think I've told it off a little bit, at least once, and that's part of what led to my epiphany. Now, when I say telling it off, probably not as bad as I've been with some ex lovers for sure not but bad enough where it caused me to pause and think, because I also noticed that, as I, you know, I said that's not very good. Why aren't you as good as you were yesterday, something to that effect. And then it just got worse. In a similar way that a human being would when criticized and put down, it does not respond positively, and indeed there is some interesting research that shows that AI gives better results probably like 30% give or take some percent when you're polite and kind instead of rude. Nobody likes to be rude. Plus, it's bad practice.

Speaker 1:

Serotonin that's another neurochemical that we have studied a lot, and it's known as your mood thermostat. It helps you feel grounded and okay with life. Things like sunlight and a walk or a moment of gratitude help release serotonin, and some drugs that I dabbled in at some points in my life actually use up a lot of your serotonin. So it can really then lead to this rebound effect where you're just left not feeling any like there isn't any of that, because there literally isn't any of that available in your system. But the good news is there are ways to build that back up in the system relatively quickly, so like walking out in the sunlight and just practicing gratitude, thinking about the things that you're grateful for, that can actually help to release more serotonin in your system. So if you're stuck in comparison loops on social media, serotonin can plummet, so don't do that.

Speaker 1:

Another popular neurochemical is endorphins, and I think that's actually a whole group of neurochemicals. It gets bundled together and called endorphins, but these are natural painkillers. They're also the things that can help us like go, go, go sort of speedy, not sort of. Many of them are speedy. They show up during laughter, during crying, dancing and like some extreme sports like I like to do. I'm somewhat of an endorphin addict. I think it would be fair to say. I think it'd be fair to say, most of us addict. I think it would be fair to say, I think it'd be fair to say most of us are addicted to our own neurochemistry in various ways, and so, yeah, that's fairly pretty normal. We have our different preferences.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk about GABA. G is capital, g-a-b-a. That stands for something that I should look up, but I don't know what I assume, because it's in capitals that it stands for something that I should look up, but I don't know what I assume, because it's in capitals that it stands for something long and hard to pronounce. But GABA is like the brake pedal for your brain, so it slows down those loops of worry and lets you rest. It is increased when you do deep breathing. Deep breathing, singing, rocking or even petting something fuzzy, including your own hairy arms. That can help boost GABA, which is one of those feel-good neurochemicals in the brain. So cortisol, on the other hand, is known as your stress alarm, so it's helpful in danger. It can help speed you up. But when it stays high, like when you're doom-scrolling or watching the news or being hyperproductive without sleeping a lot, it fries your whole system.

Speaker 1:

I happen to be one of those people with chronic autoimmune stuff since I was pre-puberty still dealing with them today, in my 50s, and those symptoms. When I say them, I'm referring to a whole myriad of inflammatory systemic symptoms which generally come from systemic symptoms, which generally come from elevated cortisol, or that's one of the biggest players that then leads to these spillover cascades in the skin, with hives or, you know, in the mind, with brain fog. It's a complicated basket, but cortisol is one of the big players. So a bonus player that ties all this together in so many beautiful ways is your vagus nerve, which runs from, like the middle of your behind your third eye, here behind your forehead, through your throat, attaches to your vocal cords, to your heart, to your digestive system, to your reproductive organs, to your other nervous nerves, in such a way that it helps to switch you back and forth between fight or flight or rest and digest, and we're still learning about it, but it is a long winding nerve that helps regulate almost all of these neurochemicals that I've been talking about. So it responds to breath, to your tone of voice both the pitch and just the vibration of it in general, and especially to connection through things that I just talked about, like oxytocin release. Like oxytocin release, so how we can hijack the loop and regain control of our own nervous system instead of just handing that over to AI or other human beings.

Speaker 1:

I've made other videos and you've seen it before and you'll see it again if you've watched me at all. I love to do these quick, what I call two-minute resets, and some of my favorites lately include the self-hug or squeeze which is wrapping your arms around your body, just like it sounds inhaling, for three or four and then, if you can slow it down, and I also like to switch which arm is on top get that bilateral effect to the brain, which is healthy, and add a soft mmm, maybe a sway to the exhale, exhale, mmm. Just a few of those will really help to re-regulate nervous system. If you're feeling dysregulated, there's the tree, touch time out, which is to check the time, and then put your phone down and step outside and see if you can find a tree or a textured wall or something to put your hands on and just connect, touch the ground, even if it's cement or pavement, just spend a few breaths reconnecting, maybe check the time when you come back in and then see if you can play a little game with yourself where you spend longer and longer amounts of time, like if you only spent 30 seconds outside without your phone the first time, maybe you could spend like three whole minutes the second time and you keep trying to increase it thusly to where maybe you're spending like a whole afternoon, or I mean, dare I suggest that you might be able to live for three whole days without your phone sometimes. I've heard that it is astoundingly healing. I think we should all try it, but I'm not trying it today. But I I can pat myself on the back and say I can make it. You know, at least 30 seconds, the 30 minutes, probably easy enough. Three hours I think I've done.

Speaker 1:

There's the double inhale sigh, also known as the physiological sigh, made popular by Dr Huberman. My notes are trying to get away from me there and that one I use a lot. It is a longer exhale and two inhales, one shorter inhale at the top to pop open those lungs, and about three or more of those can really help to re-regulate the nervous system. Trip that vagus nerve back into the rest and digest state. If you've been over in the fight or flight and I sometimes think it does kind of work to wake me up a little if I'm feeling all of a sudden sleepy I haven't played with that one enough to really, you know, that's really just. That's uh, just me saying a thing that might, might not be true. That's what that is, but let me know if you have any. I know, I know that they say that exhaling longer than inhaling helps calm you down and inhaling longer than exhaling helps, uh, wake you up. But I wonder if you couldn't still, within the framework of the physiological sigh, also incorporate that fact and trip the nervous system you know like, if you think of it like a switch from one, switch to the other, with the physiological sigh, either to calm you down or to wake you up. That was a lot of I don't know. Do you Let me know?

Speaker 1:

Five word gratitude ping, which is texting a real human. Five grateful words like you matter to me, thanks. That's a nice one that AI actually came up with all on its own. I didn't add that to my outline. There's a mirror check moment where you ask am I scrolling for connection or escape, and then choose a living interaction. If you're scrolling for connection, if you can or even just at least recognize that, and just by recognizing that and knowing that, it's okay, you can even pat yourself on the back for finding a way to alleviate your sense of loneliness in a temporary way, as long as you're recognizing that it is temporary and everything is temporary, but also that the AI is not capable of reciprocal relationship in the same way that another being is. And, as I mentioned earlier, that does mean that it's not going to have the same capacity to react negatively, which can be a real bonus, but it's also not genuinely reacting positively either. That's a program, it's a facade made to push your dopamine buttons and your other buttons, your whatever, whatever keeps you there buttons. You know, and I'm not.

Speaker 1:

I am wanting to stress that I am not trying to say that AI is a bad thing at all. I think many of us are turning to AI, because we already had issues with intimacy. I certainly am in that basket. So I am not of the mind that we should do away with AI or not allow kids to interact with it. I just think we need to be mindful, we need to be aware, we need to be aware, we need to talk about these things. So, if you would like more structure, my human reboot protocol gives you a three-day protocol. You can, of course, digest it at your own pace, but it's set up to be three days of micro practices that help to rewire your chemistry, and I will include a link to that somewhere around here.

Speaker 1:

Let's get to the closing of this puppy. Land this plane, shall we? I want to say again I do not think that tech is evil. I think sometimes people accuse me of that. Just recently, someone put me on the other side of a camp. That I don't think was fair. I do not think it's evil. I'm not opposed to it. In fact I would say and have said it saved my life. Dopamine isn't bad, it's fun stuff, in fact. It's just that you need to keep it in in check, in balance, and all of all the neurochemicals are good in the right balance. So, um, balance and connection isn't optional for a healthy life. It's biological, and I think we're we're all confronted with all these options that make it seem like our biology is optional, and perhaps we will figure out how to merge with silicone life and make some of it more optional. I don't know biological beings, and it is still important for us to pay attention to how our neurochemistry responds to the things in life. So, um, your heart still knows how to feel and you're not too far gone. You're right here with everyone else. We're all in this together.

Speaker 1:

So when you pick up your phone tonight, think about what. Are you unconsciously trying to create connection or escape? Not to judge it, just to just to notice. Start to notice that thing and if you can think about what living being it could be a plant or a tree or a pet or a person could help you spark that same chemistry. Instead, if you're, if you can think about what you're trying to get from the AI and, at least some of the time, practice getting that somewhere else, and if not, that's fine. I don't think we need to. I don't think we need any more reasons to feel bad about what we're doing or how life is going. So that is not my intention at all.

Speaker 1:

I want to reiterate that it's perfectly normal, I think, finding you know there's a whole spectrum of ways that we find to escape and to alleviate various pains or all sorts of things, and so, yeah, however you're getting through this life, I commend you for that and probably could do better. I say the same to myself all the time. So let's all try a real-world connection moment this week, can we? And then, if you're willing, you can DM me Tell me how it went. Was it awkward, beautiful, bittersweet? All of it is part of this amazing life. It's the stuff of meaning of this life, I would say. So I'm going to wrap it up here and say thanks for joining me on the Authentic Action Podcast today.

Speaker 1:

If any of this sparked something in you, be sure to drop me a comment, be sure to leave me a review, sign up any of that. If you're interested in the Human Reboot Protocol, you should be able to find a link to that. I also have a new book out called the Shift Own your Emotions, own your Life. You can find that on Amazon and there should be a link to that as well. So, yeah, remember that AI may have dopamine, but you've got dishes, opposable thumbs and a heart that knows how to feel. Till next time. Ciao, for now, no-transcript.