Jules Evans, a link in my chain of trust, writes about a topic I am trying to follow.
All your friends are belong to us
As billions of people turn to AI for friendship and therapy, the industry needs to upgrade its ethics to stop instances of harm like AI-enabled spiritual psychosis or boundary violations by AI guides. This effort mirrors similar efforts in psychedelic therapy, and in fact the two initiatives overlap.
This is big and getting bigger and perhaps more harmful, although I also see potential for good.
Replika is the leading US AI friend company, ‘for anyone who wants a friend with no judgment, drama or social anxiety involved, with an AI that's so good it almost seems human’. There’s also CharacterAI, founded by one of the founders of Google DeepMind, which has 30 million users; there’s Nomi, where users can ‘build a meaningful friendship, develop a passionate relationship, or learn from an insightful mentor’. And there are AI companion companies aimed at children, like My AI on Snapchat, which has 150 million users. The biggest of them all is Microsoft’s Xaoice, a friend bot for China’s lonely millions - it has 660 million users.
Peter Limberg continues to be a source of wisdom and inspiration for me.
The problem with the self-help scene and life coaches (and their fallacies) is that they prematurely name the problem, offer a solution, and then sell you (manipulate you) through various marketing tactics. Going into solution mode too early is not wise… Instead, one has to have the courage to stay with the bother and integrate emotional parts while cohering their reasoning.
Why not do both? Integrate the emotion and cohere the reasoning.
Years ago I watched Rebel Wisdom videos and I continue to follow the work of Ali Beiner (and wonder about what happened to David Fuller).
Sensemaking 102: From Insight to Impact
In June, we’re launching our first feature-length documentary, Crossroads. The documentary explores our growing loss of trust in our institutions and one another, the tension between embodied connection and abstraction that exists in our technology, economy and social fabric, and how we reconcile this duality to move toward a better world.
Sounds good.
Jim Palmer is one of the newest links in my chain of trust and he exposes me to new territory to explore.
Weekly Substack Round-Up
…in this week’s Mother’s Day edition, I wanted to recommend a few women thought leaders on Substack that I’ve gained and learned much from following. Of course the list could be twice this long and I forced myself to chose only 15 for round one. There’s a round two coming.
And I was very pleased to see Jessica Böhme and Claudia Dommaschk in the number one and number two spots on this list.
Here is how a chain of trust works. After scanning Jim’s list, I decided to check out Mona Mona which led me to Feminist Works. After scanning the archive, I soon found an item of interest.
Feminist Stacks Roundup - May 5, 2025
Curated posts from leading feminist stacks, organized by number of 🧡 likes.
And this yielded 34 more links to explore sometime. Did I say I was overwhelmed? I am certainly not bored!