Is “Loneliness” the New Smoking? Can AI be the Solution?
Loneliness has been deemed the latest public health epidemic by the U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy. It is said to pose a health risk equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and costs about $1 billion in healthcare resources annually.
According to a social survey conducted by Meta and global data analytics company Gallup in 2023, nearly 25% of people across 140 countries (over 1 billion people) feel a significant or moderate level of loneliness. In November of the same year, the World Health Organization (WHO) established the WHO Commission on Social Connection after recognizing the growing transnational issue of loneliness.
As loneliness becomes a pressing global health threat, AI-powered chatbots are emerging as a potential solution. Many startups are utilizing AI chatbots to address the increasing sense of loneliness among individuals.
Breaking the stereotype that men must suppress their emotions, the startup Forever Voices AI collaborated with psychologists to create a virtual girlfriend named CarynAI. Caryn Marjorie, who claims to be the world’s first influencer transformed into AI, initially had over 2 million followers on Snapchat and came up with the idea of launching an AI chatbot service to connect with more fans.
However, as she interacted with more and more followers, she realized that many people were suffering from loneliness. Recognizing loneliness as an imminent social problem, Caryn Marjorie decided to collaborate with the AI voice startup Forever Voices AI to launch a AI-driven voice chatbot based on her own persona, called Caryn AI.
According to Forbes, within just 9 days of its launch on May 2, 2023, Caryn AI experienced a 500% increase in usage. By early March 2024, less than a year since its launch, Caryn AI had attracted over 15,990 fans who interacted with it at a rate of $1 per minute.
Unlike regular chatbots, Caryn Marjorie has shared on X platform that constantly lacking a channel to express emotions can easily affect self-confidence and indirectly lead to psychological trauma. Therefore, she involved psychologists as collaborators to incorporate psychological therapies like cognitive-behavioral therapy into the chat process of Caryn AI, aiming to provide stronger companionship.
Supported by Sequoia Capital, Belong Center aims to restore emotional connections between people through traditional means and offline activities.
Interestingly, Radha Agrawal, the co-founder of Belong Center, believes that the increasing sense of loneliness is caused by contemporary technology, making AI-driven solutions not the best remedy. Radha Agrawal gathered like-minded friends who shared the same concern and established Belong Center.
Positioning itself as a “community center 2.0,” Belong Center’s mission is to end loneliness and foster a sense of belonging. Through a series of offline activities such as group meditation, sharing courses, and volunteer services, they aim to restore emotional connections between people in this technology-driven world.
Despite the common belief that AI and the loneliness epidemic are unrelated social issues, they are actually intertwined. With more and more startups using new technology to propose innovative solutions for loneliness, the close relationship between technology and loneliness is becoming evident.
Psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad mentioned in an interview with Fast Company that devices like ElliQ can alleviate people’s short-term need for social interactions but inadvertently reduce their desire for real human contact.
In other words, as the usage time and frequency of such products increase, users may mistakenly believe that they no longer need any “real” human interaction, leading to a stronger sense of loneliness in the foreseeable future.
While there is no research yet to prove whether the introduction of AI can solve loneliness, it may temporarily suppress it in the short term. However, in the long run, social support between individuals will still be the only solution to reducing loneliness. After all, blindly believing that new technologies like AI robots can replace friendships will only lead to greater feelings of loss, despite the endless promises of technology.
References: WHO, The Guardian, PBS, NBC News, AI Business, The Wall Street Journal, The Conversation
