[ExI] High schoolers use AI as a friend or companion

[spike at rainier66.com]

>...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
Subject: [ExI] High schoolers use AI as a friend or companion

>...Washington promotes AI in classrooms. New data shows 19% of high schoolers report romantic AI relationships, 42% use it for mental health support. The more schools deploy AI, the more students feel disconnected from teachers—and from reality.
Robert Brown     October 09 2025

<https://www.implicator.ai/federal-ai-push-collides-with-classroom-data-on-romance-risk-and-weaker-ties/>

>...BillK



Ja to all, but my comment on AI teachers: this has been coming.  I was an early advocate of Khan Academy in the schools, starting when my son was in grade 2, because I could see how damn well it worked.  It was self-paced (which made many teachers nervous) and Sal did such a great job explaining things.  It was still a real person, even though you never saw him: it was a voice and a white-board, where you saw him draw figures and equations.

Several years later I witnessed as AI came along: our Science Olympiad team harnessed that ChatGPT workhorse to our wagon.  Oh did that young AI horse pull, my goodness.  That year (2022 when it was hot off the press) we were early adopters of AI trainers, and we totally whooped ass that year.  

Asimov saw all this coming in 1951.  That was for me one of his most memorable SciFi short stories:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fun_They_Had

Where we are now: if a student understands how to us AI tools as teachers, they are waaaaay the hell better than human teachers for they just know so much more about everything.  Furthermore... the student exercises enough control over it that the student can steer the learning into their own personal areas of interest, which often promotes the required learning as a side benefit.  Students learn grammar, writing and math while studying a passion such as geology or airplanes or whatever else turns them on.  Hey I was there, I heard and I saw.

spike