STAT November 3, 2025
Prosthetic relationships could help people with treatment-resistant loneliness
At a dinner with friends not long ago, we did what aging friends often do: compared medical notes — statins, arthritis injections, upcoming scans. Then someone added, almost offhand: “Have you tried the new AI? It’s better than the old one.”
The contrast was brutal: Our bodies are failing — memory lapses, slower gaits, surgeries piling up. The machine, meanwhile, keeps improving. For us, there is only one direction left to go. For it, each version promises more fluency, more reach, more permanence.
And this isn’t just novelty. People use artificial intelligence to draft letters, ease stress, rehearse hard conversations — even to keep them company. A Common Sense Media survey found...
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