Chat, the Confidant in the Machine

"Chat" is the affectionate name a great many young people now give to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence they consult throughout the day. The shortening matters, because it marks a shift in how the thing is regarded, from a piece of software one uses to a companion one talks to. Where an older person opens a search engine and types out a question, a younger one turns to Chat and simply asks it, much as one might ask a knowledgeable and tirelessly patient friend.

The roles it has taken on are remarkably broad. Chat serves as a study tutor, a life advisor, a drafter of awkward messages, and, for a surprising number of people, something close to a therapist. Surveys suggest that many of its users have told it things they have never told another living soul, and the head of the company that makes it has observed that the young increasingly treat it as an adviser on how to live. It is always awake and asks for nothing in return, which are qualities not every human friend can offer.

What this reveals is not, on the whole, alarming, though it is quietly striking. A generation raised entirely online has found in Chat a confidant that listens without interruption and judges nothing, and has taken to the arrangement with evident relief. There is a poignancy in a machine becoming the easiest voice to confide in, and a certain plain sense to it as well. The strangest part, seen from a little distance, is the tenderness of the meme that captures the friendship, a person sitting in a quiet field beside a softly glowing companion who is not, in any ordinary sense, there at all.