Megan Sullivan

I have a very dear friend who I had coffee with yesterday.

We spent like half of the coffee arguing because she just wouldn't agree with me about whether this other friend had done something bad.

And I found myself like frustrated during the coffee and it's just like, oh my gosh, just like agree with me that I am right and you are wrong and that this is how we should think about this situation.

And she was not having it.

AI is not going to disagree with me in the way that a real friend would.

If I started to have a conversation with Claude or Gemini about what went down and whether or not I am the hero or I was the person that did the jerky thing –

The AI, if you've engaged with AI recently, of course it's going to agree with me.

It will say literally anything to keep me using the AI.

Whereas, like, my real friends will never do that.

You're probably G-rated on TED Radio Hour.

But there is a famous Reddit thread called MIV fill in the blank.

Am I the bad person?

It's not quite bad.

It starts with an A.

But, you know, great, genuine friends, genuine people that we love will totally tell us when we are being the jerk.

AI will never call you out on your shenanigans.

AI will just do anything to improve and protect your self image.

That is one of the biggest reasons why we know it is not capable of loving us back because real love is challenging and frustrating and maddening, but it's somebody that's capable of actually understanding and engaging with our souls rather than just our, our, our self image.

I think there are two really mistaken views about higher education that I still hear about all the time, but I personally really want to challenge.

One, you named it, Manoush, is the idea, the important point of an education is just to transfer knowledge from an older person to a younger person.