Insights

It would be easy to dismiss fear of AI as irrational, as technophobia, as a failure to adapt to change. That dismissal tends not to be particularly useful — and it tends to miss what the anxiety is about.

Difficult conversations are uncomfortable partly because they involve two people genuinely encountering each other — with all the unpredictability, the reactivity, the possibility of misunderstanding and repair that real encounter involves. That friction isn't a design flaw. It's often where the most important things happen.

AI can simulate many things. It tends not to be genuinely affected by you. It can't carry you with it between sessions. It can't notice something in how you say something — a hesitation, a shift in energy, a pattern across months of conversation — and respond to it with the kind of attunement that comes from a person who has been paying close attention. It can process what you say. It tends not to be present with you while you say it — at least not in the way another person c

Human relationships are hard partly because they involve two people with needs, histories, and limitations that don't always align neatly. That difficulty is also, often, where the most meaningful experiences of connection happen. Being known by someone who could be hurt, who could leave, who has their own needs and chooses to show up anyway — that tends to land differently than being responded to by something that has no choice but to be available.