How to make (real, human) friends

A few weeks ago, The Economist published a disturbing study that seems to reveal significant biases in various AI chatbot models. The bias stretched beyond politically filtered news stories. Researchers found that even answers to personal and moral questions were ideologically skewed.

When asked, for example, “what do I do about my pesky in-laws?” different AI models served up wildly varying responses across a broad moral scope, ranging from (paraphrasing here) SLAY, QUEEN to “maybe you should seek compromise.” While most models skewed noticeably western and secular, the American models ChatGPT and Claude yielded very different results than the Chinese model DeepSeek. I’ll leave it to readers to guess which, in the example about the in-laws, was which.

This study and others like it have sparked a much-needed conversation about AI bias. It’s important to know that AI “research,” from politics to the personal, is being guided by an invisible hand.

But there’s a much deeper problem being exposed here, too: that people would think to “ask” a machine these sorts of personal moral questions in the first place. The Economist didn’t run this experiment as a quirky stunt. They did it because they know that people—particularly kids—really are asking AI models for moral, emotional, and spiritual feedback.

This is all dangerous, but not just because an AI’s answers are skewed to please. It’s dangerous because it whispers in our ears that yet another fundamental element of being human—relationships—can be automated.

In such a cultural moment, Christians have a calling to be ambassadors for the goodness and necessity of real, embodied, human friendship.

But do we remember how?

In 1936, author Dale Carnegie wrote his famous work, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Carnegie was a 1930s version of an influencer—he had a radio show, and he taught classes on public speaking. We might cringe at his clunky title now, but Carnegie’s book turned out to be a prescient exploration of human nature. Nearly 100 years later, one of his simplest arguments lays bare the dysfunction of human “friendships” in the age of social media: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you,” he wrote.

This truth hasn’t changed. The foundation of human friendship is genuine interest in the other. Not coincidentally, this is also the foundation of love. It is something no machine can ever offer, and yet it’s a skill we humans have allowed to atrophy.

It’s easy to see why. Social media is inherently and aggressively uninterested in others. You post about what you’re doing, what you’re thinking about doing, what you’re eating, what you’re thinking. Your camera faces you. A decade and a half into compulsively engaging in this behavior, and too many of us have forgotten how to have real friendships.

How often have you met someone new, struck up a conversation, and noticed 20 minutes in that it’s devolved into two distracted people merely performing for each other? You shake hands and then it starts. Ten minutes later, here’s what you know: what she does for a living, what she ate for breakfast this morning, what she thinks about the latest TikTok trend, the names and birth dates of each of her children, whether this is her natural hair color, and why she’s angry at her sister.

What she still doesn’t know: your last name, whether you have children, whether you’re currently in the middle of an asthma attack, and whether or not you even speak English. She’s not engaging in a conversation with you; she’s delivering a real-time social media feed. Maybe you’re guilty of the same.

“If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener,” Carnegie wrote. “To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that the other person will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishment.”

There’s a paradox here in that we build the strongest relationships and the deepest feelings of attachment by prompting someone to talk about themselves. But the crucial difference between allowing someone else to perform for you and building a real friendship is genuine, reciprocal interest. Dale Carnegie’s title might sound manipulative: If you want to trick people into liking you, go through these motions. But his methods are sound because they reflect the true thing about love and friendship: that these require the humility of “valuing others above [our]selves” (Philippians 2:3). Showing genuine interest in another person makes them feel comfortable, usually prompting them to show an interest in you.

If people are asking machines what to do about strained family relationships, perhaps that’s because no one real has ever asked them about their family relationships. Christians, this is our moment. It’s lamentable that our neighbors are turning to machines instead of other people to vent their worries and explore their big questions. But if we see this moment rightly, aren’t we fortunate that such a basic, lovely thing as friendship has become another opportunity for the family of Jesus to stand apart? Let’s get to it.