{"id":3243,"date":"2026-02-11T09:42:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/?p=3243"},"modified":"2026-02-11T10:03:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T15:03:50","slug":"who-needs-a-best-friend-when-you-have-a-best-bot-by-tiffany-cheng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/2026\/who-needs-a-best-friend-when-you-have-a-best-bot-by-tiffany-cheng\/","title":{"rendered":"Who needs a best friend when you have a best bot? By Tiffany Cheng"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Who needs a best friend when you have a best bot? By Tiffany Cheng\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Who needs a best friend when you have a best bot?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Tiffany Cheng<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can AI relationships replace human connections?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re sitting in a classroom, the teacher has filled the board with weird symbols and might as well be speaking another language as they explain matrix algebra but you know The Matrix as a popular movie from 1999 and algebra is supposed to be x = 2 + 5. You don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on but you want to, you swallow your fear, raise your hand and ask a question. You can barely hear the instructor\u2019s answer, let alone understand it as your heart throbs in your ears – your peers are staring at you. After their detailed explanation you still don\u2019t get it, you ask another, smaller <\/em>question and they answer that too but there\u2019s no eureka moment, you\u2019re just as lost as before. The teacher wants to move on and so does the class. \u201cDoes that make sense now?\u201d you nod, smile politely and open up ChatGPT to write: Explain matrix algebra to me like I am five years old\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a common experience for most students today and it extends beyond the classroom. As artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots have improved, people have begun to turn to AI in place of humans. ChatGPT and other chatbots have been increasingly used to supplement daily tasks, work, and even act as sources of emotional support and advice. Some people have even gone as far as to form relationships with AI, using chatbots as romantic partners, friends, and advisors. There is a lot of fear of AI chatbots replacing authentic human to human relationships due to their accessibility and capacity to simulate humanity but much empirical research. To address this gap, my research aims to examine how people are forming relationships with AI chatbots and the implications of AI-human relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first step towards this goal is to capture the ways people may form relationships with AI chatbots and compare it to human relationships. To effectively compare human-human and AI-human relationships, we will measure how chatbots compare on relationship satisfaction and quality. Relationship researchers have found that relationship satisfaction and quality can be captured by measuring performance on six \u201cfriendship functions\u201d: stimulating companionship, help, intimacy, reliable alliance, self-validation, and emotional security. Stimulating companionship is whether you can have fun with the other person, help is whether the other can provide guidance, assistance, or other forms of aid, intimacy is the ability to be vulnerable and sensitive with each other, reliable alliance is the other\u2019s availability and loyal to you, self-validation is how much they reassure and validate you and finally, emotional security is the other\u2019s ability to provide a sense of comfort and confidence in threatening or new situations. Altogether these have been able to reliably measure relationship satisfaction and positive outcomes from that satisfaction in human-human friendships. They have not been explored in AI-human relationships but if people are truly starting to believe AI can act as their friend and confident, maybe the way we examine AI chatbots in research should be less as a tool and more as a human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Referenced Works<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendelson, M. J., & Aboud, F. E. (1999). Measuring friendship quality in late adolescents and young adults: McGill Friendship Questionnaires. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science \/ Revue Canadienne Des Sciences Du Comportement, 31(2), 130\u2013 132. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/h0087080<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who needs a best friend when you have a best bot? By Tiffany Cheng Can AI relationships replace human connections? You\u2019re sitting in a classroom, the teacher has filled the board with weird symbols and might as well be speaking another language as they explain matrix algebra but you know The Matrix as a popular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":489,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[42,43,22,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grad-student-blogs","category-grad-student-research","category-news","category-psychology-grad-student-blog"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3245,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3243\/revisions\/3245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}