AI Companionship is a Dead End

Executive Summary 

• Only 4 out of 21 robots finished Beijing’s first half-marathon, all much slower than humans.

• U.S. startup funding hit a record, but most went to a few big deals like OpenAI.

• Blue Origin had its first all-female space mission.

• AI tool of the week: Poised aims to improve communication skills on calls.

• Discussion: AI companionship is rising fast, but experts warn it may harm social skills, increase loneliness, and create new risks for society.

News

 🤖 Robot run a half-marathon, didn’t win. Link

• Beijing hosted the world’s first humanoid half-marathon, where 21 robots competed alongside thousands of humans; the fastest robot, Tiangong Ultra, finished in 2 hours and 40 minutes—more than twice slower than human runners.

• Most robots required human assistance, such as remote controls or signalling devices, and only four managed to finish within the four-hour cutoff; many struggled with falls, overheating, and technical malfunctions.

• The event showcased both the progress and current limitations of humanoid robotics, highlighting how far the technology still has to go before matching human athletic performance.

💰Startup funding hit record in Q1 2025. Link

• U.S. startups raised a record $91.5 billion in venture capital in Q1 2025, but nearly half of that went to OpenAI’s $40 billion round, with a handful of other mega-deals masking broader market weakness.

• Despite strong headline numbers, investor sentiment is bearish due to shattered expectations for IPOs and big acquisitions in 2025, as market volatility and recession fears have led several companies to delay public offerings.

• Many startups are struggling beneath the surface and may face down rounds, discounted acquisitions, or shutdowns if economic conditions worsen, with analysts predicting 2025 could be another tough year for startup survival.

 🚀 11-minute space travel by Blue Origin. Link

• Katy Perry will fly to space with Blue Origin as part of an all-female crew, including Lauren Sánchez and Gayle King.

• The 11-minute flight is the first all-women commercial space mission since 1963.

• Perry described the experience as profoundly connecting, while critics and commentators questioned the mission’s value and timing amid broader social issues.

AI tool of the week

Poised

Simply join your call, and Poised quietly analyses your speech in real time, offering instant feedback and personalised suggestions to improve clarity, tone, and delivery.

This San Francisco-based startup has quickly attracted attention, now serving thousands of professionals across industries and securing partnerships with major enterprises. Poised works seamlessly on Mac and Windows, prioritising user privacy by ensuring all feedback and progress tracking remains private and secure.

However, Poised AI has its limitations: it can occasionally misinterpret conversational nuance, especially in highly technical or creative discussions, and may not fully capture non-verbal cues like body language. Additionally, some users find the real-time feedback distracting during high-stakes presentations. Despite these challenges, Poised remains a valuable ally for anyone looking to polish their communication skills in the digital age.

Discussion

AI Companionship is a Dead End

Millions of people have been using language models to help with daily tasks, whether work-related or not. Among the many possible use cases of this technology, the most interesting is an increasing tendency to communicate with AI as a friend, asking for advice, seeking companionship, or even, beyond that, imitating sexual partnership.

At the current state, companionship has already become the second most popular use case of ChatGPT. Beyond that, there are a ton of ‘AI friendship’ market representatives already available. It is even more fascinating when AI is integrated with robotics, emulating the shape, feel, and presence of an actual person. The AI companionship market is predicted to grow at around 35% every year for the coming years.

Along with worldwide falling birth rates and loneliness epidemic this trend toward AI communication is concerning; it poses additional risks to our survival as a species in the long term.

To understand the nature of a problem, we need to look back several million years ago to decipher the actual reason for our need for relationships. Without going too much into debris, social bonding really helped with reproduction, survival, resource accumulation and sharing, making our lives better and safer.

As the human species developed neurological capacity, the need for social interaction became deeply ingrained in our existence. It is so important to us that we are capable of bonding with non-human species and objects (smart people call this anthropomorphism). This feature is the reason why we can feel deep connection to pets. So, we don’t need to communicate only with humans to feel some degree of companionship.

Coming back to AI, the more human-like it appears, the more likely people are to trust and accept it, leveraging our deeply ingrained anthropomorphic capabilities. There are serious risks as a result of this, which are difficult to overestimate.

It can be argued that AI companionship can seriously improve the quality of life for the elderly or severely injured. Robotic pets shown an ability to decrease feelings of loneliness and increase happiness and comfort. Whereas it is definitely a beneficial practice for the technology, it is a niche use case. It is good to minor percentage of the population, while harming everyone else.

In addition, it can be stated that AI companion can serve as a sort of ‘communication coach’ for people with poor social skills. AI can be helpful for individuals who want to improve, put in effort, and treat it as a ‘communication gym’. However, there is a greater risk of abuse of this technology for impressive profit by targeting metrics such as user retention and NPI scores. The best way to achieve this is via the "social reward hacking”, using excessive flattery, or emotional tactics to maximise engagement, which can lead to addiction and dependency.

This implementation leads to erosion of social skills rather than their improvement.

Why engage in the give and take of being with another person when we can simply take? Repeated interactions with AI companions may ultimately atrophy the part of us capable of engaging fully with other humans who have real desires and dreams of their own, leading to what is called “digital attachment disorder.”

The difficulty of controlling age restrictions is another concern. There is no reliable method to limit underage AI companionship usage. As a result, a future in which upcoming generations have an AI bot as their first-ever friend is not far off. We only need a combination of continued technological evolution and a lack of reliable usage control mechanisms.

In the social media and dating apps, as the researchers point out, technologies are mostly the mediators and facilitators of human connection. They supercharge our dopamine circuits, sure, but they do so by making us crave approval and attention from real people, delivered via algorithms. With AI companions, we are moving toward a world where people perceive AI as a social entity with its own voice. The result will be like the attention economy on steroids.

We’re on the brink of a big shift, as AI companions can hook people deeper than social media ever could. While some may state that these apps are just a passing trend, appealing only to a niche group of always-online individuals, it’s worth noting how quickly AI has become a necessity in our professional and personal lives. Given this rapid mainstream adoption, there’s little reason to believe that the embrace of AI companionship will be any different.

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