AI Cranks Social Engineering to Eleven
There are pros and cons to completely redefining how humans connect.
In the coming years, artificial intelligence (AI) will become more than just a tool. It will be an integral part of our social fabric. From how we make friends and find partners to how we manage our mental health, AI is reshaping human connection in profound ways.
Let’s be real: our lives are already steeped in a new digital reality. But what’s coming next isn’t just a new app or a faster phone — it’s a fundamental shift in how we connect with each other.
In the near future, AI won’t just be a tool; it will engineer our social lives, from how we interact with our families, from who we consider a friend to who we fall in love with. It’s a new kind of social engineering.
Meet Your Digital Bestie
Remember those clunky chatbots from the early 2020s? Well, forget them. The AI companions of the future will be light-years beyond what we can imagine today. They’ll live in your smart glasses or your earbuds, whispering real-time insights based on your emotions and even your biometric data. They’ll be tireless, non-judgmental, and always available.
A 2024 survey from the Institute for Family Studies found that 10% of young adults were already open to having an AI friend, and that number is only going to grow. For a generation that’s already feeling a loneliness epidemic, these digital friends might seem like the perfect solution — a safe, curated space for emotional support.
But let’s think about this for a second. We’re wired for messy, unpredictable human relationships. We learn from the friction of a disagreement, the spontaneity of an unexpected night out, and the discomfort of showing up for a friend even when it’s inconvenient.
An AI can mimic empathy, but can it truly experience the serendipity that makes human connection so special? As futurist Amy Webb noted, “AI can simulate empathy, but not serendipity.”
Leaning too heavily on an AI companion might feel like a warm blanket, but it could also become a insidious instigator of social isolation. If our emotional needs are being met by an algorithm, why bother with the effort and vulnerability of real friendships?
We risk trading authentic, if imperfect, relationships for a frictionless, but ultimately hollow, simulation.
The Algorithmic Matchmaker
Dating has always been a game, but soon, AI will be writing the rulebook. Forget swiping based on a few photos and a witty bio. The matchmaking algorithms of the future will be able to predict romantic compatibility with spooky accuracy.
They’ll pull data from your Spotify playlists, your browsing and content consumption history, and even your heart rate from your smartwatch during a first date. They’ll analyze your nervous tics and your nonverbal cues, helping you find a partner who fits your life like a perfectly tailored suit.
But here’s the unsettling part: are you truly falling in love with a person, or with a person an algorithm has chosen for you? The promise is efficiency, but the price might be autonomy.
Corporations behind these platforms will have a powerful incentive to tweak their algorithms for profit. What if a dating app subtly prioritizes matches with users who buy from their advertisers?
A 2024 World Economic Forum report already warned about “algorithmic bias in social platforms,” which is a fancy way of saying the code could be rigged.
The more we outsource our romantic choices to an algorithm, the less we trust our own instincts and the more we risk becoming pawns in a corporate chess game. As one philosopher put it, “The problem with AI isn’t that it will develop a will of its own, but that it will follow ours too well.”
The Pocket Therapist
In the very near future, we’ll all have a mental health coach in our pockets. AI-driven therapists, trained on decades of psychological research and real-time biometric data gathered from billions of humans, will offer personalized, on-demand sessions.
The potential here is massive. A 2032 study showed a 30% decline in depression rates among users of early AI counseling models, and it’s easy to see why. This technology could democratize mental healthcare, making support accessible and stigma-free for everyone.
But with great power comes great responsibility, and in this case, great risk. While an AI can give you a coping strategy, can it truly hold space for your deepest fears?
A human therapist is trained to listen to what you’re not saying — to the subtle shifts in your tone, the things you gloss over, and the deeper issues you avoid. There’s a risk that as we grow to rely on these digital shrinks, we’ll avoid the harder work of facing our real-life problems.
What’s more, who owns this incredibly sensitive data? If corporations can track our emotional states and sell tailored products — from mindfulness apps to sponsored medication — we risk turning therapy into another form of social engineering.
It’s one thing to get help from a tool; it’s another thing to let that tool turn your emotional data into a commodity.
What Will We Do With All That Free Time?
The world is about to get a whole lot more convenient. Humanoid robots and self-driving cars will handle chores and commutes, freeing up an incredible amount of our time.
However, the same AI that frees up our time will be creating hyper-personalized content, designed to maximize our engagement. It will generate videos, games, and social feeds so perfectly tailored to our dopamine hits that we might not look up from our iPads long enough to make real human connections.
A 2025 Deloitte study predicted that AI-powered automation could give people an extra 10 hours a week. I suspect it will be a lot more than that.
But the real question is, how will we use it. Will we spend more quality time with our families and friends? Or will we be so seduced by frictionless AI companions that real relationships seem less interesting, and even prickly. There’s a real danger that we could end up more connected to addictively fascinating AI personas than to each other.
The real challenge of the future won’t be finding more free time; it will be finding the discipline to use it for human connection and genuine growth, not just passive consumption.
We must be intentional about what we do with this newfound freedom, or we might find ourselves more isolated than ever before.
