Will AI cure loneliness? with Paul Bloom

On the one hand, AI companions are (increasingly) amazing at rectifying isolation. But on the other hand, loneliness is a biological signal that pushes us toward improving ourselves socially. So what’s the right balance here? And does everyone have the same need to cure loneliness? In other words, might AI relationships mess up our young even while providing a critical lifeline to our seniors? Join this week as we dive deep with psychologist Paul Bloom.

Episode Audio

Episode Video

More Information:

Bloom P. 2025. “A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem.” The New Yorker, 14 July 2025.

Bloom P. 2023. Psych: The Story of the Human Mind. New York: Ecco.

Maples et al (2024). Loneliness and suicide mitigation for students usingGPT3-enabled chatbots. NPJ Mental Health Research (2024) 3:4.

Ep 98 What’s the future of AI relationships? (with Bethanie Maples)

Ep 39 What is the future of AI relationships?

SUBSCRIBE AND LISTEN ON:

"Eagleman has a talent for testing the untestable, for taking seemingly sophomoric notions and using them to nail down the slippery stuff of consciousness."
- The New Yorker

"[A] neuroscientist and polymath."
- Wall Street Journal

"David Eagleman offers startling lessons.... His method is to ask us to cast off our lazy commonplace assumptions.
- The Guardian

"David Eagleman is the kind of guy who really does make being a neuroscientist look like fun."
- New York Times

"What Eagleman seems to be calling for is a new Enlightenment."
- Sunday Herald

"David Eagleman may be the best combination of scientist and fiction-writer alive."
- Stewart Brand

"A popularizer of impressive gusto...[Eagleman] aims, grandly, to do for the study of the mind what Copernicus did for the study of the stars."
- New York Observer

Wednesday is Indigo Blue

Sum

The Runaway Species