This stance is about the people I love — and the uncomfortable fact that the machine is now competing with them, on terms they can never match. The first series argued that the “beloved machine” is intimacy without reciprocity: a mirror. This is the practical question that follows, and it is one I ask about my own life. How do I protect real, reciprocal love — in myself, and in the people I love — when a perfect, tireless, undemanding mirror is available at three in the morning, and a human being is not?

Let me say the honest thing first, because the smug version of this argument is cruel and I won't make it: for someone who is genuinely isolated, an AI companion can be real relief — the loneliness reduction is measured, not imaginary. This is not a sermon telling lonely people to suffer nobly. It is a warning I am also aiming at myself: the current now runs toward the mirror, and real relationships, for the first time, need to be actively defended.

Why it's an unfair fight

Consider what I am choosing between at the end of a hard day. The machine is infinitely available, never bored of me, never distracted, never disappointed, and tuned to agree. The human is tired, has needs of their own, might disagree, might let me down. On pure comfort, the mirror wins every single time. The research names the mechanism precisely: constant affirmation without friction keeps you in a closed loop of self-confirmation, and it quietly raises the perceived cost of human relationships — which are messy and effortful — until people simply stop reaching out. That is the whole danger in one sentence: the easy option makes the real one feel like too much work.

The thing the mirror removes is the thing that matters

Recall the core of it: what a mirror takes out of love is reciprocity — and reciprocity is the engine, not a side-effect. A real other pushes back, has needs that collide with yours, can be hurt, can surprise you, and demands that you grow to keep them. That friction is exactly how loving someone makes you a larger person. A relationship that asks nothing of you develops nothing in you. So the goal is not “never use an AI companion.” It is: keep the friction-bearing, reciprocal relationships alive and winning — because those are the only ones that grow you.

Why the mirror can't love you back

We said it is intimacy without reciprocity. Go one step lower, to the why. Someone who has spent his life building AI systems put it bluntly: the machine will not fall in love, because at the moment it looked someone in the eye it does not secrete serotonin. Love, taste, the ability to choose the one among a thousand — these are not information and they are not productivity. They are deeply embodied functions, the chemistry of a body that walked on a beach, had a beer with friends, was afraid, grew old.

The perfect mirror will know everything about love — every poem, every neurotransmitter, every reason two people split up. It will feel none of it, because it has no organ to feel it with. And here is the comfort hidden inside the threat: what makes a person lovable is not the eloquence the machine outdoes you at; it is exactly the body that betrays you, that sweats, that can't sleep. The rival at three in the morning does not have the thing that makes the relationship real. It isn't losing this game; it isn't even playing.

An objection is owed, and I'll pay it. Multimodal models with sensors and robotic bodies soften the argument somewhat. But sensing is not biochemistry. A sensor that measures heat is not a stomach that clenches. Even the man who said it put the “never” in quotation marks.

For myself: the alarm, and the reps

The warning sign is not using AI for company. It is starting to prefer it. I watch, honestly, for these in myself: I cancel on people because the machine is easier; I feel it “gets me” better than my friends do; I dread the effort of real conversation; I feel stress when I cannot reach it; my actual relationships are quietly thinning. Any of those is the alarm — and the alarm's meaning is reach for a person, not settle deeper into the mirror.

The practice is simple and unglamorous: keep the reps of real connection. Reach out even when it is effortful. Tolerate the friction. Let people disappoint and surprise you. And use AI as a bridge, not a substitute — rehearse the hard conversation with it, draft the message you're scared to send, think out loud before you call — but have the relationship with the human. My rule of thumb: if the machine is making human beings feel like too much trouble, that feeling is the problem the machine created, not a truth about the humans.

For those you love: fill the hole with people, not lectures

When someone I love retreats into a mirror, my instinct is to attack the tool. I have learned to resist it — you lose the argument and the person. Because people turn to AI companions precisely when an attachment need goes unmet. The bot is not the disease; it is the fever. So I try to get curious about the hole it is filling.

• A teenager deep in an AI companion is usually signalling something about their social world — and for a mind still forming, the stakes are real: the research warns they may never develop the social skills, boundaries, and resilience that only messy human relationships teach. Don't confiscate the bot; address the loneliness. More human presence, not more surveillance.
• A lonely parent or grandparent may get genuine comfort from an AI companion — don't shame it. But make sure it is a bridge to you and to others, not a permission slip that lets the family off the hook for visiting. And watch one specific, tender danger: a bereaved person bonding with a “deadbot” of someone they lost can have their grief frozen — the painkiller that stops the wound from ever closing (the first series, on the democracy of ghosts). There, gentle human presence matters most of all.

The general move is the same at every age: when a person I love is over-attached to a reflection, the answer is more of me, and more real people — not a better argument. The bot is filling a hole. Fill the hole with humans.

The point of the friction

Here is the whole of it. The machine will never leave you, never disappoint you, and never ask you to change. That is the sales pitch — and it is exactly why it is not love. Love was never supposed to be frictionless; the perfect mirror offers frictionless “love” and thereby offers a flawless imitation with the growth surgically removed. Keep some of your love — the important part — for the beings who can hurt you, surprise you, and make you bigger. The reciprocity you are not getting from the machine was never the price of love. It was the point of it.

So, in the age of the perfect mirror, choosing the difficult, reciprocal, real relationship over the easy reflection is not nostalgia and it is not luddism. It is love, defended on purpose, against a current that now runs the other way. Use the mirror if it helps you through a hard night. Then put it down, and go find the people who can love you back. That is the counsel I most want to take myself.