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.
Is no one going to point out the irony? of asking complete strangers, via the internet, for personal advice? The chatbot is completely divorced from reality, but internet-strangers are completely divorced from your reality too. They don't know anything about you or your partner, except for that which you disclose and who lies on the internet?
Plot twist: the internet strangers are chatbots.
I'm not clicking the links, but writing to a well-known publisher isn't different: one's asking remote strangers to comment on a local issue. They're completely blind to the reality on the ground. All three scenarios are probably a product of an increasing social-isolation, of which technology might be to blame... (or capitalism, cough, cough)
Everyone has their heads bowed, staring at their phones. I've seen joggers with their head up, looking straight ahead: at their phone. A critique of remoteness and technology's ability to fool the human-psyche into believing a remote thing is actually a local thing would not be amiss.
I mean arguably (and assuming nonbot accounts are responding) asking strangers still means you're asking other humans with the capacity for empathy.
There was also a really interesting article in Stat recently that looked at AI dependency from an addiction medicine perspective. It also touched on the difference between AI addiction and social media addiction:
https://www.statnews.com/2026/05/11/ai-dependence-addiction-substances-relief-psychology/
Again, I guess this would also have to assume the interactions on a social media platform aren't predominantly made up of algorithm driven bot accounts.
I have also tried talking to people in my own life about my situation, and these discussions usually feel very similar to discussions you would have about a partner with any run of the mill addiction who starts behaving in destructive ways. In many cases of addiction, it can actually be helpful to hear the perspective of other empathetic humans who aren't directly involved in the situation, but might understand what you're going through.
Regardless of what actions you take in terms of your own personal relationship with any addict, there are two objectively true statements that can also feel somewhat conflicting in terms of decision making.
•The first true statement: An individual suffering from addiction/dependence faces a loss of control over their own life. If they continue down the path of addiction, their life is going to spiral further out of their own control.
Even if the individual can recognize they have a problem, the likelihood of successfully overcoming any addiction/dependence has less to do with individual willpower, and more to do with very complicated external factors. One of the most important external factors is the support system available to the individual.
•The second true statement: The loved ones within the addicted individual's support system, don't deserve to suffer and have their own lives ruined due to the addiction.
Friends and family are going to tell you you're better off simply cutting ties with the person who has become lost to their addiction. They're not wrong to suggest that. They're just trying to fulfil their role as your own personal support system. The hard part is that whatever decision you ultimately make, is the decision you have to live with.
There's never an easy answer for what you should actually do in this situation, but unfortunately this isn't the first time I've watched somebody very close to me suffer from an addiction or mental illness.
I've found if you can kind of step back and attempt to look at your situation from a more objective perspective, you can understand that you (as the loved one) are often left feeling like you're watching a person you care about slowly drown in their addiction. Maybe you've even tried to hand that person a life vest a few times, only to have the person push the life vest away, and then try to pull you under to keep themselves afloat.
I've come to the conclusion that in these situations, you can either: A. Stay in the water and drown with them, B. Accept the person you love is going to drown, cut your losses and try to move on, or C. Figure out how you can get yourself to a safe distance first. From that safe distance you can focus on putting the pieces of your own life back together. Once you do that, then you can try to let the person you love know that you want to see them safe too, and you're willing to throw them a life preserver when they're ready.
A. is the worst thing you can do.
B. is understandable, but can leave you forever second guessing your decision. Trying to move on is the hardest part, (for me at least) and depending on how close you were, sometimes you can move on, but you're left with an unresolved emotional wound that is never going to heal completely.
C. is what I usually aim for, but it can also be the hardest route to take. It requires you to really try to stop focusing so much on the present fire you're not going to be able to put out right now, and keep your eye on the future you hope to create. You have to do that while grieving what you have lost and letting yourself feel all the pain that comes with losing what you had and what you used to think they future was going to look like.
But, this also means that you don't just push your feelings away only to get hit with a crippling wave of regret and grief months or even years later.
C. is especially difficult if your loved one seems to be constantly lighting new fires for you to put out, and going out their way to hurt you/push you towards decision B.
If you go the route of C., there's a good chance the day will never come when that loved one decides to ask for help. Even if they do, sometimes they climb out of the water only to then jump over board again and have the cycle repeat itself. Regardless, C. means that at least you don't let yourself passively drown in a doomed attempt to save them, and you can live the rest of your life knowing you tried your best.
Sorry to ramble, but that's kind of the entire reason I use Lemmy. Writing things out and explaining it to somebody else always forces clarity.