Connection: Why We Would Rather Talk to a Machine

The Lulu Essey Podcast · May 21, 2026 · 20m

This is not a conversation about whether AI is good or bad. This is the more subtle, nuanced layer of AI and mental health that the binary debate is missing: are we getting AI emotional support without even realising it?

Many of us are. We open ChatGPT or Claude for something practical, a question to think through, a strategy to plan, an email to write, and we leave having been soothed by software. AI is meeting emotional needs we did not know we were carrying, in moments we thought were efficient. That is the layer this episode is about.

According to research by the RAND Corporation…