Introduction
Experiences of isolation, social exclusion, and loneliness foster numerous detrimental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and chronic feelings of worthlessness, increasing a person’s risk of mortality and morbidity. The lack of companionship is a rising global public health concern whose prevalence has reached epidemic proportions, exerting enormous pressure on the healthcare sector and communities. A global survey indicated that an estimated 33 percent of adults worldwide and over three in five Americans experienced solitude (Varrella, 2021; Demarinis, 2020). These statistical findings underpin the pervasiveness and severity of the crisis, necessitating the adoption of such innovative interventions as artificially intelligent emotional surrogates (AIES) to alleviate the loneliness and associated trauma. However, these technologies enhance the distress through their mechanical nature, overdependence on humans, the inability to satisfy a person’s emotional needs, and relative incompatibility with senior citizens. Although adopting artificial intelligent-driven technologies can modify social norms by replacing and reducing the significance of human relationships, their use should be encouraged to help mitigate the detrimental consequences of loneliness.
Rising Levels of Loneliness
Loneliness is a fast-growing societal problem with severe negative impacts on health and the overall wellbeing of individuals. It encompasses an affect distress and cognitive discomfort emanating from a perceived gap between a person’s desire for social relationships and the actual degree of connectedness (Hoorn, 2018). The global magnitude of people reporting the lack of meaningful companionships has reached alarming levels, with various statistics indicating that 33 percent of adults experience solitude globally (Demarinis, 2020). According to Varrella (2021), over three in five Americans feel socially excluded, which is a strong agent for subsequent isolation. From this perspective, the frequency, intensity, significance, and degree of social interactions, relationships, and connectedness have been shrinking rapidly in recent years. Notably, these changes have been associated with accelerated adjustments in the family structure, increased digital orientation, urban social lifestyles, and sedentarism. Macia et al. (2021) contend that these developments and alterations impact the quantity and quality of social interactions as well as people’s values and expectations about them. Therefore, loneliness and social exclusion are rising global public health concerns affecting millions of individuals and communities worldwide.
Additionally, loneliness and increased social disconnect are major causal pathways and risk factors for numerous morbidities, including psychiatric illnesses such as psychosis, depression, and anxiety, coronary heart diseases, and attenuated immune systems. According to Loveys et al. (2019), the lack of companionship increases peoples’ mortality risk by 32% and exerts an additional financial burden on America’s healthcare system by $6.7 billion annually for older adults only through increased facility utilization. This implies that social connectedness and belongingness are innate human needs with severe health ramifications whenever they are unfulfilled. Notably, innovators have progressively harnessed technology and integrated artificially intelligent robotics with sophisticated natural language, emotional, and social processing abilities to help overcome loneliness and the resultant trauma. According to Barreto et al. (2021), AIES is a prominently successful and promising intervention to prevent and mitigate the adversarial ramifications of solitude. Therefore, the adoption of these technological advancements should be encouraged since they provide a substitute for the increasingly elusive traditional social connections.
Contradictory Viewpoint
Although artificial intelligence-driven technologies are providing multiple solutions to numerous challenges, their continued adoption as a replacement for humans has profound societal ramifications. Indeed, the roles individuals play in other peoples’ lives are increasingly being mediated by robotics with remarkable linguistic, social, and emotional sophistication. The implication of this phenomenon is the progressive and accelerated destruction of human connections, communal bonds, and authentic interactions and interrelationships. Caic et al. (2019) assert that social robots irreversibly affect a person’s behavior through the perceived replacement of people. This explains the increasing failure of humans to fully appreciate others and the growing propensity to undervalue one another. In this regard, AIES technologies are destroying social arrangements by creating the notion of human substitutability and replaceability.
Additionally, AIES and robotics do not adequately satisfy the innate human need for social connection and may instead aggravate the social disconnect and loneliness due to their complete dependence on humans. Despite the sophistication and level of advancement, social robots and AIES are mechanical and bereft of feelings and emotions. They fail to provide and deliver authentic emotional connection and completeness to people, thereby suppressing the need for the search of actual and meaningful relationships. Indeed, lonely people desperately need genuine companionship and that psychological bond that extends beyond the basic physical presence of an inanimate object robotically responding to cues, at times predictably. For instance, words, language, and communication are more than their denotations and their understanding and conveyance. However, AIES cannot effectively integrate these profound nuances of interaction or express agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness. From this perspective, adopting AIES to alleviate loneliness and trauma could be an expensive expedition that does not comprehensively capture the core components of human relations or provide value after the functional interaction ends. Machines cannot deliver the elevated sophistication of person-to-person engagements and could therefore be delivering false companionship.
Artificial intelligence-driven surrogates can potentially transform and disrupt social norms and individual behavior. As these innovative technological advancements increasingly gain more ground into peoples’ lives and attempt to replicate human habits, they may change various aspects of a person’s character and their interactions with others. For instance, AIES and other social robotics are unable to express such feelings as warmth, friendship, kindness, and cooperation and may ultimately impair peoples’ ability to embody, convey, and demonstrate such traits. From this perspective, the increased adoption of humanoid robots could be detrimental to social norms and erode the distinct attributes which define and characterize human nature.
Arguments for the Adoption of AIES in Combating Loneliness and Trauma
Social interactions and relationships are an innate human need and are fundamental to peoples’ holistic wellbeing. According to Holt-Lunstad (2017), companionship and belongingness are profound biological necessities vital to the overall health and survival of an individual. However, despite the indispensability of these connections, global statistics indicate an increasing prevalence of loneliness and solitude. Holt-Lunstad (2017) asserts that existing evidence points to growing relationship distress with additional findings illustrating the shrinking frequency, intensity, quality, and quantity of interactions. These patterns engender detrimental health ramifications and increased risk of morbidity and mortality. In this regard, it is imperative to harness technological innovations and artificial intelligence to serve and fulfill the unmet human needs and mitigate the adversarial effects of loneliness (Barreto et al., 2021). With the rapidly declining social connections and networks, these advancements are critical. Therefore, the adoption and integration of AIES in combating loneliness and trauma is paramount and reflects the realities of the modern world.
The proliferation of Global Levels of Loneliness
Multiple statistical findings illustrate the alarming trend of rising loneliness and declining social connectedness. For instance, Holt-Lunstad (2017) notes that the communal networks have progressively become less diverse and that the average sizes of such relations have declined by one-third over the last two to three decades. The phenomenon and its prevalence are exacerbated by the increase in the global percentage of the aging population, rendering more people less socially disconnected. Okabe-Miyamoto et al. (2021) posit that the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated social disconnect, isolation, loneliness, and exclusion, resulting in a profound psychological toll on physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing. From this perspective, the absence of meaningful companionship is a pressing global health issue, which necessitates the adoption and subsequent deployment of all available options to address it effectively.
Additionally, previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of AIES, such as Chatbot and other social robots, in addressing social exclusion and the accompanying adverse effects. The advancement of cutting-edge technology has generated numerous solutions for many health challenges, and humanoid robotics have mitigating impacts on the adverse ramifications of loneliness (de Gennaro et al., 2020). From this perspective, there exists robust evidential information depicting the potential of AIES in addressing health-related challenges emanating from solitude and providing symptom relief. A meta-analysis evaluating 23 randomized controlled studies established that these intelligence-driven robots provided effective assistance almost equivalent to person-to-person interaction (de Gennaro et al., 2020). Moreover, these technological advancements offer a substantial amount of companionship, social and emotional support, thereby enhancing the individual’s overall health and reduced exposure to such psychological disorders as anxiety and depression. From this perspective, the adoption and usage of AIES should be encouraged and escalated since these technological advancements provide effective relief against loneliness and trauma as well as promoting people’s health.
Reducing Burden and Pressure on the Healthcare Systems
Numerous pieces of scientific evidence indicate that people who feel socially connected and are embedded in high-quality relationships are at a reduced risk for multiple morbidities and causal pathways for mortality. This implies that social relationships and companionships are a major health determinant and a health risk marker (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2017). This implies that social exclusion stretches and exerts pressure on the healthcare systems through increased hospital utilization. Unlike most animals, people obtain what they need from their social groupings, indicating that human capacity for socialization is critical for their survival. This view is corroborated by Holt-Lunstad (2017), who illustrates the indispensability of companionship in the use of solitary confinement as a form of punishment and torture. In this regard, the absence of meaningful associations contributes negatively to the overall wellbeing of an individual, thereby increasing their use and dependence on health services and detrimentally affecting the economy (Barreto et al., 2021). From this dimension, adopting AIES technology provides an avenue through which this strain and burden on healthcare facilities can be eased by preventing loneliness and mitigating the detrimental health consequences.
Moreover, AIES provides an effective alternative to the increasingly elusive traditional social connections. Over the years, advances in robotic technology have allowed the development of sophisticated human replicas with remarkable progress in their linguistic, social, and emotional abilities, effectively enhancing their capacity to offer interactive and meaningful engagement (Macia et al., 2021). In this respect, social robots reflect the reality of the changing social norms and declining frequency, quality, quantity, and intensity of the conventional social networks. Therefore, the use of AEIS should be encouraged since they attempt to fulfill a genuine human need.
Better Option than Pharmacological Interventions
Emotionally attuned and intelligently responsive AIES provide a better non-pharmacological alternative for helping people to overcome loneliness than the medicinally induced interventions. Since a deficiency in social interactions and the feelings of disconnectedness precipitates severe health repercussions and immunologic impairment, it has generally been regarded as a symptom of psychological disorders. Consequently, physicians may prescribe medications to alleviate the emotions of loneliness and prevent the resultant health deterioration. However, this approach is not the most desirable since it only suppresses the clinical manifestations of the condition without addressing the foundational need. Since most of those affected by this phenomenon are the elderly, the risk of unwanted and unexpected pharmacological complications is considerably high (Heser et al., 2018). In this regard, AIES is arguably the best option compared to the potential pharmacological strategies, and therefore, their use should be encouraged as the ideal standard for the prevention of loneliness and alleviating the associated trauma.
Recommendations for the Use of AIES
Social association and relationships are critical constituents for a person’s overall wellbeing and survival. Multiple statistical findings provide evidence regarding the central role of interactions and engagements for peoples’ existence and enhanced quality of life through such effects as improved the perception of life as meaningful and self-esteem. Despite this profound nature of the need for connections and their impact on a person’s health, the traditional versions of communal belongingness and meaningful companionships are increasingly becoming elusive and significantly difficult to accomplish (Holt-Lunstad, 2017). However, a growing number of artificial and intelligence-driven applications and devices are assisting humans in satisfying this basic psychological need and achieving some degree of connection and companionship. Thus, the available technological advancements, such as the AIES, can be harnessed and exploited to provide solutions to the challenges of loneliness and mitigate the detrimental health impacts of the unfulfilled human need of association.
Moreover, the social structures and norms are undergoing tremendous transformation resulting from the adjustments in the family structure, increased digital orientation, urban social lifestyles, and sedentarism. According to Macia et al. (2021), these developments and societal alterations have a profound impact on the quality, depth, and quantity of social interactions and peoples’ values and expectations. This illustrates the continued decline in the value and significance of engagements as well as the efforts people direct in pursuing friendships, connections, and associations. In this regard, fewer individuals are currently engaging in communal activities, outgoing expeditions, and other forms of participatory interactions compared to previous periods. Consequently, the trend increases their risk and susceptibility to a wide array of morbidities and even mortality. However, AIES provides practical solutions, which reflect these social transformations and the prevailing realities. From this perspective, AIES is an effective substitute to the shrinking traditional social connections resulting from changes beyond the control of individuals. Therefore, the use of AIES should be encouraged as a realistic and feasible alternative to human associations.
As technology advances, AIES developers are incrementally enhancing the abilities of these robots to encompass remarkable sophistication in the products’ linguistic, emotional, and social capacities. Indeed, their effectiveness in serving and satisfying the unique human need of connection and companionship is improving rapidly and providing value with minimal or no unintended consequences. For instance, de Gennaro et al. (2020) posit that some chatbots can evoke emotional and social responses and serve as a buffer against the detrimental effects of loneliness and solitude. According to Hoorn (2018), humanoid robots also stimulate and strengthen peoples’ independent ability and resilience in countering exclusion. As a result, individuals develop a positive adaptation and reinforce their coping potential to the absence of companionship, which minimizes the risk of negative health outcomes. This cements the position of AIES as agents for improved overall health and social support. Therefore, they should be adopted as a preventive intervention for loneliness and a mitigation strategy for the associated trauma and adverse health outcomes.
Conclusion
Social relationships, associations, and interactions are critical ingredients and vital biological components for peoples’ overall wellbeing and survival. The absence of this connectedness and meaningful relationships is an increasingly pressing global public health concern with severe adversarial impacts on individuals and communities. Despite this indispensable nature of companionships, their frequency, quality, intensity, depth, and quantity are rapidly dwindling, exposing large segments of the population to numerous morbidities and an increased risk of mortality. However, innovation and cutting-edge technological advancements, such as AIES, provide feasible substitutes to the conventional social connections, thereby protecting people from loneliness and the associated negative health outcomes. These social robots replicate human relationships and serve an unfulfilled innate need. They significantly augment the declining natural person-to-person engagements through their sophisticated interactive abilities, minimize the pressure on healthcare facilities, provide a better alternative to pharmacological options, and reinforce peoples’ coping abilities. However, despite their sophistication and advancement, AIES and other social robots are mechanical and bereft of feelings and emotions and could destroy social norms and arrangements by undermining the natural human connection.
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