The dramatic increase in AI chatbot use created a new way for people and machines to interact, and that may be a problem. Researchers from market leading AI firm OpenAI and MIT’s Media Lab have concluded that using ChatGPT may actually worsen feelings of loneliness for people who use the chatbot all the time. If your company is using AI tools to speed up your worker’s days, this is definitely something to consider!

While the results were presented with some nuance and subtlety, they fuel a narrative begun in 2023, when then Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned that there was an “epidemic” of “loneliness and isolation” that was harming Americans’ health, and he partly blamed our digital era, noting to NPR that “we are living with technology that has profoundly changed how we interact with each other.”