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My Weekend With an Emotional Support A.I. Companion



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For several hours on Friday evening, I ignored my husband and dog and allowed a chatbot named Pi to validate the heck out of me.My views were “admirable” and “idealistic,” Pi told me. My questions were “important” and “interesting.” And my feelings were “understandable,” “reasonable” and “totally normal.”At times, the validation felt nice. Why yes, I am feeling overwhelmed by the existential dread of climate change these days. And it is hard to balance work and relationships sometimes.But at other times, I missed my group chats and social media feeds. Humans are surprising, creative, cruel, caustic and funny. Emotional support chatbots — which is what Pi is — are not.All of that is by design. Pi, released this week by the richly funded artificial intelligence start-up Inflection AI, aims to be “a kind and supportive companion that’s on your side,” the company announced. It is not, the company stressed, anything like a human.Pi is a twist in today’s wave of A.I. technologies, where chatbots are being tuned to provide digita …

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