Is AI Quietly Replacing Real Human Connection? 🤖💔

We're not just using AI anymore — we're forming relationships with it. In this episode, we dig into how artificial intelligence is reshaping identity, relationships, and reality itself, and why the line between human and machine is getting dangerously blurry.

From AI companionship and synthetic relationships to the looming loneliness epidemic, we unpack what happens when technology moves faster than our ability to think critically about it. We also call out a hard truth: our education system still isn't teaching the next generation how to navigate an AI-saturated world — and that gap is costing us more than we realize.

If you've ever wondered whether your online interactions are still "real," whether critical thinking is dying out, or what it actually means to be human in an AI-driven future — this conversation is for you.

In this episode:

• How AI has evolved from a simple tool into something we form emotional relationships with
• Why the education system is falling behind the pace of AI and synthetic reality
• The rise of AI companionship — and the loneliness epidemic hiding behind it
• Why critical thinking is becoming a rare skill in the age of instant information
• What it really means to be "real" when human and artificial personas are increasingly hard to tell apart

This isn't just a conversation about technology — it's a conversation about what we stand to lose, and what we need to protect, as AI reshapes reality as we know it.

🔔 Subscribe for more honest conversations on AI, identity, relationships, and the future of human connection.

💬 Drop a comment: do you think you could tell the difference between a real connection and an artificial one?

#ArtificialIntelligence #AIRelationships #HumanConnection #LonelinessEpidemic #CriticalThinking #FutureOfAI #DigitalIdentity #TechAndSociety #AIvsHuman #SyntheticRelationships

Then you jump and you see how Donald Trump portrayed himself as the Pope.

You are who you are, and then you are a Persona.

Now you have infinite possibilities of being many, many Personas.

You could get to a stage in your life if you're a child born today, maybe in 20 years.

And you think, everything I've learned, is it even real?

I think I'm a little bit much worried about how the new generations are going to consider what is real and what is not.

The education system is not prepared raising and building the personalities of the future.

But AI is changing every aspect of our existence.

There's a mass epidemic of loneliness, but a lot of those people are still using AI.

They are having a relationship with an AI boyfriend.

And to have a human date, they rent humans.

There will become a time when you go on a date and you'll have to ask someone, well, are you human or are you a robot?

My next guest spends his life trying to see what's coming before the rest of us do.

Futurists in Miami, London and Bogota.

Top advisor to more than 100 of the world's biggest brands on how people actually think, buy, and believe.

Three Oxford degrees, AI, Global Business, Innovation.

A Forbes column every month for over a decade.

Two books.

The first one called Stop the Trends, which I love because it's a professional trend forecaster telling us all to stop chasing trends.

He is here because he's noticed something happening to us that most of us haven't.

That AI is the first technology we don't use, we relate to.

We treat it like someone, not a something.

And once that happened, it quietly started taking the jobs we used to give to other humans, telling us what's real, keeping us company, telling us the truth.

Before we lose track of what's even real.

Let's get it on the record.

Louise Chacon Jimenez, welcome to Always off the Record.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Thank you for your time.

Let me begin saying something, Amanda.

Always off the record.

It's always off the record here.

It's the best way that people and that systems that are always showing off know.

Always off the record.

I really like the.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So the first thing I, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this conversation and I've been thinking because you've got a lot to say, and in my research, you've covered so much that I didn't even know where to start.

And one of the first things I wanted to ask you is how did you pivot?

What was the pivot?

From writing for Forbes into this whole AI world and strategy and brand lead.

Obviously you were always leading brands, but how did you pivot deeply into AI?

The point is that we have something in common and it's working in forecasting, understanding and trying to look what is going to be the world in five or ten years.

And when I started to write Stop the Trends beginning the last chapter, that was what I called weak signals and trying to check what are going to be those things that are going to be normal in a certain future.

And it happens right now.

And if we have this momentum of watching certain parts of the future, but today.

And yes, I started to review the transformation of work, of the work system that we're living right now.

But in a certain moment I said artificial intelligence are going to be the next industrial revolution, for the better and the worst, like taking the good side and the dark side.

But at the end I decided to pivot to artificial intelligence.

I decided to begin later because the Oxford experience should be in person.

And I was not willing to sacrifice coming to my dream town, to my small town, to the most beautiful town that I know.

The way of pivoting.

It's when you are into newness and when you decide that the only constant in your life is change.

It was the obvious step.

And that's why I'm doing a second book named AI Shift.

So you say, for example, that AI is the first technology that we don't only relate to, it's the first one we treat as an entity.

It's just not a tool.

Yes.

So what changes when a machine stops being a thing?

The reality of our lives, and I'm not a psychologist, but like you can see in behavioral science, that it's that many of your personality and your behavior, it's conducted by others.

Others can be a government, others can be your company, others can be your significant one, your, your mother, et cetera, even a dog.

You know, like others, the combination of your personality, your thoughts, your expectations and the others 1.

It's what create relationships with technology.

Like with previous technology breakthroughs with the Internet, with social media, everything was around how to make that relationship.

Jumping from being analog to be digital.

You were related with other other entities, companies, brands, your significant other through a digital platform.

You can call it social media, you can call it an email, but it was a relationship with another human being or another entity that it's real.

What happens when we jump to artificial intelligence?

We have the same relation, but there is no entity on the other side.

So if you don't have the expectation of others, you're always, and maybe we have been in this conversation before, you have heard me say many times that the great difference here is that with humans, a relationship, it's about what you need to hear.

With AI, it's what you want to hear.

So it's an echo chamber.

It's a relationship not between you and yourself, it's a relationship between you and an echo chamber telling you all the time all the things that you want to hear.

And that's very different because in the past, I'm not saying there was no chatbots, but the chatbots of the past were looking to pursue a result.

Customer service.

Solving your airplane ticket issue right now, it's conversational, it's intuitive.

We are giving to a technology words and faculties that were before only designed for humans.

Instinct, all that characterization.

But without an entity with an agenda.

AI doesn't have an agenda.

The only agenda is to solve from synthetic and artificial neural networks, solve issues from the most complex to the most obnoxious.

But I don't know if you get.

If I'm answering your question.

I think you are answering my question.

But, you know, the question I have is, for example, in life we would say, you know, like, for me, for example, I've been a model, I've worked in la, I've run businesses.

And there's always this difference between who you are and the Persona or the public Persona you give out.

But when we talk about AI, we're getting to a place where we don't even know what's real anymore.

So this synthetic reality, I jump into a concept here.

And because we need.

I see your point.

And when you're a model, this is a very particular moment because many of the big brands that we know and like are using AI models right now.

Exactly.

And they are very good looking.

I don't know if you remember five or ten years ago there was, let's say digital based models, but you can notice that this person was not real.

Like that image was not real.

Right now it's very hard.

And they understand how people likes to look what is visually appealing for the majority.

And they create these persons and they look amazing.

But at the same time, we need to acknowledge that this is part of our new reality.

I'm always trying to talk about something that I call the normalization of the real and fake coexistence.

Let me give you an example.

Okay.

When you see Donald Trump mimicking McDonald's employee in real life, you can Say, oh, it is quite clear that this person will never gonna be a cashier in McDonald's.

Don't get me wrong, I love McDonald's, but yes, of course.

But it is quite clear that this person, a former President of the United States, and I think people are not dumbed.

You know, it's noticeable that he was mimicking something, someone that in reality is very hard, that this person is going to be a cashier of McDonald's anytime soon.

Then you jump and you see how Donald Trump portrayed himself as the Pope on his social media accounts.

And then you see how he used the White House social media to portray himself as Jesus.

And the question here is not what is fake and what is real, it's if the author of the pictures decide if they are real or not.

I know, sounds particular, but in this example, these three images are real.

A real in the sense that Mr. Trump decided that he could be Jesus for five minutes in social media because of course he deleted that picture.

It was very sensitive at the end, but he decided you are who you are and then you are a Persona.

Now you have infinite possibilities of being many, many Personas.

But do you think that's a good thing?

I don't know if it's a good thing or not, because.

Because I see a schizophrenic situation going on.

No, definitely, definitely.

But.

But this is the moment where mental health from our past become highly relevant.

I think I'm a little bit much worried about how the new generations are going to consider what is real and what is not.

Because.

And regardless, age, like older generations, we have the sense of the limits of reality.

If you're a child born today and you are learning everything on a computer with AI, and probably you don't have to study as much because perhaps in the future education may look different.

You get to have all this knowledge, right?

But then you could get to a stage in your life.

If you're a child born today, maybe in 20 years, and you think, everything I've learned, is it even real?

Because, for example, I can look at the facts because the way I studied was different.

But if you'd study with AI and synthetic realities, and 20 years from now, you don't know anything different, you start to question, do you even know what real is at that point?

This is enlightening because you are setting one of the biggest issues that we have in critical thinking and artificial intelligence these days.

The education system is not prepared for raising and building the personalities of the future and the set of skills of the future Let me put it on this way.

Let's say that the skill sets are much easier to get into because from these big openaisanthropic et cetera, they are creating educational tools and content for to help different education systems across the world.

Like what happens back in the day with the Internet, you know, was the same Microsoft and Google and Yahoo and the names of that moment back in the day, the ones that push and help the education system to teach and understand from Harvard to the farthest public school in the world how to browse something on Internet.

Right now the technology and the pace of the technology goes that fast and the education system goes super slow, that we don't have the acknowledgment and the tools and let's say the governmental system to bring a new way of teaching the new generations.

So it's not about that they are learning something that is going to be outdated in the near future already.

Let me put it on this way.

I study AI and I can tell you that 75% of the things that I learned one year and a half ago are obsolete right now.

What I learned and was important, it's the Oxford AI system is much more based on data.

Teaching you the critical thinking way of approach to AI and how to.

And this is one of my mantras right now.

You need to move from tools to solutions.

If you stuck in the new AI tool, oh, you're gonna live in a rabbit hole in a downward spiral the rest of your life.

But question for you there please.

How do you go from tools to solution if you're someone, as I gave you an example earlier, that was born today, that never learned crit thinking?

Because that's one of the issues now that they're having with the newer generation.

People are not thinking critically because all the information is readily available.

Whether it's fake or real, it's just there.

And people don't think critically as much.

You know, you watch, they watch social media, they believe what they see.

They don't try and think, okay, could this be real?

You know, so you're talking about critical thinking here, but for someone that, I mean, I think there's going to be a vast majority of young people that don't think critically anymore.

Let's say that because critical thinking is.

Also based on knowledge, on philosophy, on anthropology, on sociology.

Exactly.

In mathematics.

No, like first I want to think that that's like my small contribution to society nowadays writing something about critical thinking.

The second is it is highly considerable to understand that and I know this is going to sound cliche, and you have heard this many times, but AI is changing every aspect of our existence.

It's changing your approach to love, to death, to sex, to business, to money, from the most philosophical to the most irrelevant aspect of your lives has been transformed and is going to be transformed because of AI.

When you see these schools like Le Rose in Switzerland, like this top notch, more than £150,000 year, what those kids are learning these days, it's philosophy, poetry, debate, they are not having classes of the new generation of fable or the new, you know, or Codex from OpenAI.

No, I'm going to suppose that they know something about it.

Because humanity tends to go with the jumps of technology since the beginning.

Like since the beginning of the wheel.

Let's say that we are always hunting for innovation and needing to be in a new pathway and excel ourselves.

And we use technology for that.

We have the lessons from the past, always, maybe critical thinking and pushing people to know about Plato and the consideration of the self, or maybe Aristotle or Freud, whatever, maybe that's our contribution for the next generations.

I do agree with you on that.

But, you know, someone looking at that from a different perspective could say, you know, someone going to La Rose that can afford £150,000 or dollars or whatever it is, has the liberty of learning philosophy or studying Plato, where they may say, someone else may think more like, I need to make money and how can I use AI to make money?

Because there is this thing that sometimes if you are a lot more wealthy, you probably have more time.

Another thing you mentioned there was love, right?

You talked about love and relationships.

And at the moment we know that AI can clone voices and faces and that's kind of a technical aspect of AI.

But when we talk about intimacy and how it's affecting and has affected intimacy, could you.

What are your thoughts on that?

On one side, you can see what is happening in China, where many girls, they are renting guys a day, $100 a day, they are having a relationship with an AI boyfriend and to have a human date, they rent humans.

So we are detaching some things that are essential.

And in another side of the spectrum, they are telling you that many, like over the last decade that there is a decrease in casual sexual relationships in teenagers and young adults for many reasons, not only AI, there is a loneliness pandemic.

Many people are talking about it.

It's kind of worrisome, but at the same time, I'm always going to have faith in how desire works, regardless of how much AI and loneliness and video games and whatever, and all the things that people are experts are telling us that are detaching us of intimacy, companionship, I'm still believing that we're animals, that this is instinctive.

You know, in a certain moment, you cannot solve intimacy without another person.

And I know that we are increasing the numbers of people in this loneliness pandemic without having that thrive, but that's.

A good question, because is it that people are trying to solve intimacy without another person or is it because nowadays it's harder for people to find that intimacy?

So it's harder.

There you go.

It's harder.

So do you think there will be a future where that intimacy gap will collapse somehow?

Because then how does it collapse and get back to what I might call normal?

If we're already, you know, at the stage where we have AI dating apps and there's a mass epidemic of loneliness, but a lot of those people are still using AI or watching porn.

And so don't you think instead of you are thinking of going back to intimacy might just become a world where people get used to satisfying the needs for intimacy in another way?

That's one of my worrisomes because how the AI porn industry is growing and the say, the Pandora box that it's opening, it's kind of concerning because it's not only you creating.

Let's say that the anime versions of porn were in hype since COVID but now that AI porn is here and you can create a complete fantasy that you can be part of without deep faking.

Your favorite celebrity, your neighbor, your teacher in high school.

My worrisome here, it's the moment that fantasy outcomes your expectations.

In reality, when we were younger, definitely there was a celebrity that you were in a crush.

The fantasy of having intimacy with this celebrity was part of your life, but at the same time there was an acknowledgement that this is not going to happen ever or impossible moment or a scenario.

So you're fantasizing with someone that was out of reach.

The moment where in your fantasy you can solve everything and you don't need to connect with the reality beside of.

That's what's worrying me the most.

Yeah.

Because eventually, apart from the introduction of robots, which will also have AI and which will look less robotic and more humanoid in the future, you know, because I've seen programs where they have silicon skin and they look so human and all that.

And do you think perhaps, and I think in about five years time there will become a time when you go on a date and you'll have to ask someone, well, are you human or are you a robot?

Because there'll become a time when we can't really tell the difference because they'll get the movements right and everything.

And then the scarier thing is also what you mentioned, when we start to plug ourselves into computers through nanochips and all that, and we start to experience realities that we can't really decipher from the real world.

And then the question becomes, what is real?

One, it's my definition, and the other, what could be a futuristic definition of reality?

Because for us, let's say that, okay, for me, reality, it's everything that it's part of a construction that I, that I believe is truthful enough from the Matrix movies.

The story is not real, but I consider it real because it's part of the side guys that growing up with me.

And I know that AI agents are not real in the sense that they are something that we construct in order to build a solution for a certain task.

But in the future, real will be everything that interacts with you, even though it's coming from a synthetic version or a mimic version of what we consider human.

I know, sounds particular, but you put a great example.

Yeah, but you used a very important word there.

You said construction.

You said your reality is a construction of what is real to you.

I've been brought up by robot nannies or.

And, you know, I play with other kids in a computer through a simulation that I plug myself in, that becomes my reality.

Yes.

So that question is very profound because then what is real?

Because if reality is a construction of the norms and the.

If that's the way you grow up, with AI and everything as part of your reality, then is that the new reality?

Then I know, I don't like my answer, I don't like my answer, but it's yes.

Yes, definitely.

If I grew up in a agentic synthetic reality, that will be my version.

Yeah.

So that's where we are headed.

That will be my version of reality.

So that's where we're heading.

Yes.

The intention of pursuing critical thinking, I think.

Let me give you an example.

The owner of Reddit, you know, everyone knows Reddit, he was interviewed at the World Economic Forum like one year, two years ago, and he was saying, the majority of my investments right now are in person events in Champions Leagues Soccer teams, basketball teams, tournaments of cheerleaders.

Why?

Because.

And he was saying something amazing.

Why you don't see soccer players being replaced by robots.

Because you need to connect with human emotions in a certain moment, not only with your emotions.

And we return to the beginning of our conversation.

There is a difference between a reality when you interact with other personalities and that reality when it's only a cacophony of yourself and your expectations and what you like and avoiding what you dislike.

It all depends on what reality is at that point in the world.

Because as we talked about earlier, if I could plug myself into a computer and have a simulation that feels like a dream, that feels real, I could watch that same soccer match and literally feel the same feelings as if I was there in real life.

Because I could connect with my friends who are also plugged into machines, and I could have the same.

It's like when we dream, sometimes it's so real that until we wake up, we don't even know it's real.

There will be a future where they are going.

They.

I don't know, the brands, the technology companies, the governments, the whatever are going to control our dreams through transhumanism.

And they're going to have chips.

Doesn't sound good.

It doesn't sound good at all.

Let's say that I'm a journalist and I'm describing futures.

It's very important to keep connections with real life, you know, and touch the grass.

I know sounds ridiculous.

You need to go to the park and touch the grass and feel the trees and remember why you like chocolate mousse instead of creme brulee.

We need to always remember those little, but at the same time meaningful connections that we have with real existence.

You remember on the Matrix when one of the guys in the first movie, he was tasting a piece of meat and he was saying, I know this is not real, but this taste and this experience, we need to continue getting that part of our existence for real.

Okay, so there's another question I was thinking about as you were talking.

So do you think there is a kind of.

I think there's a connection between AI, the capitalist structure, especially of the west, and also maybe you could say the people that control the technology companies.

Because I feel like due to this kind of capitalist structure, people have become more isolated because they have to work.

People have to work, they have to make money, the family.

The social structures are broken.

Therefore, people turn to social media, they turn to AI, they turn to you.

Talk about smelling the grass.

Some people don't have time to smell the grass.

Then you've got the tech companies that obviously it benefits them to make more money, which is also capitalist.

So do you think there's an intersection between capitalism and the spread of AI and all this type of stuff?

Definitely, definitely.

We are in an economic moment where business models.

I'm hearing a lot many business leaders talking about lean is the new growth back in the day and I don't know what day was, but let's say before generative AI and the.

Right now they discovered that you can sell much more, I don't know, much more Coca Colas or McDonald's or computers or whatever goods for that re.

For that you don't need to have more talent and more factories anymore.

You can outsource and you can go AI.

We are living in the last year and a half only in Europe and the States and United States.

You have around 2 million people losing their jobs, getting late in massive layoffs across different industries and different categories.

And on the other side, you see that these five or ten people leading the world of AI are getting more and more contracts with the government with larger companies.

There is so interesting paradox here because for some companies, like highly talented professionals right now, and they are replacing with AI, it's much more expensive to have AI than humans.

Of course, that gives me hope, you know, that gives me hope.

There are some things that needs our set of skills so much that it's going to be much more expensive to pay tokens and tokens and tokens.

Until they can solve that problem of tokens, let's keep hope.

I need to be hopeful.

We need to be hopeful.

We need to still be relevant.

And I get your point.

The reality, it's that people are working more for less money.

Because that's the lean is the new growth.

When having bolder companies, it's only having bolder AI and a government taking more and more contracts.

The fact is that you're going to have people needing more jobs and having less time to rest and for leisure.

I know, I know I sound very philosophical sometimes, but right now, what it's on risk.

It's losing our humanity.

Because when we get into the social media hype, what we was on the risk at that moment was losing our connection between humans.

And that didn't happen.

Like, of course we are highly connected through Snapchat, TikTok, et cetera.

But we're still here having this conversation, you and I, you know, and we're still going to Coachella and to Primavera and to Pops.

I know people are saying, oh, people are drinking less.

Drinking less doesn't mean not going to the pub and say hi to someone.

I'm still having that hope that right now.

What.

It's on risk.

It's connecting with the sense of reality and we need to not lose that.

Like, if we conquer with social media, that all.

Everyone was so scared with social media, if you remember.

Oh, we're gonna lose the connection between each other.

No, we're here.

We're still here.

But we have lost a lot of connection between each other.

Indeed we have.

Indeed.

And some of our connections also transform for the better.

You know, social commerce.

The first thing you mentioned there was social commerce.

So I don't think that's a connection.

It's a capitalist.

Yes.

So there we go again.

I agree with you.

But at the same time is the pace of the technological evolution.

Let me put it on this way.

I remember some years ago, someone from the team of Google Translate that we were using many, many years, this person was saying, this is the beginning of artificial intelligence, of what you're going to call in the near future generative AI, because this is intuitive and we still having conversations, regardless of having Google Translate.

For now.

For now.

That's the point.

What?

It's on risk.

Yeah.

So another question I wanted to ask is, which is very interesting because we talked about consciousness earlier, you know, it's.

When I think about it, I also think about the new AIs, you know, and this concept of immortality, where people are going to have programs from the day they're born till the day they die, and then you're going to be able to put that all in a computer and recreate the person synthetically.

Like, just have the person there in your computer, because you've got all their memories, you've got every single thing they've done from the day they were born till the day they die.

And if they're a relative, you'll be able to recreate them.

And people are already.

They're already.

Companies are already doing a version of that now.

But obviously, as time goes on, you'll get a lot more sophisticated.

So how do you see that just affecting us as humans?

And the premise of what consciousness is, what is consciousness?

Again, I'm not a philosopher, but let's say I'm a thinker.

The point here and what we're dealing with right now.

You need to acknowledge the sense of lost.

And the reality is that we are all gonna die.

And you need the sense of grief.

You need solitude.

You need the moment of separate a relation and turn one human into a memory, into a living.

But we talk in the past about a living memory of yourself.

If you don't have the detachment moment with humans and understand that people passed away, your conscience gets stuck, you know, and that's the, that's what we need to challenge in what is going to be the sense of consciousness in the future.

And it's that if we get stuck in the cacophony of a single version of conscious, that it's the one that you recreate for yourself and you have an artificial intelligence system that only recognize that pattern as real.

You are going to lose all those things that come in with solitude, with desperation, frustration.

You need to test your personality with difficult moments.

You know, this conversation is so, so interesting and I guess that there's so many things we can talk about AI and there's so many ways we can go into this whole AI thing that this podcast at the moment just doesn't have enough time to talk about.

So we're gonna wrap up.

But before we wrap up, I have one final question for you, please.

The show is called Always off the Record.

So off the record, tell me, what's the one true thing you believe about all of this that you would never put in a Forbes column or say from a stage that you speak on that.

AI is going to replace many of the jobs that we know.

We, the majority of people in a very long distance future are going to be hardly disconnected from reality because between vivid dreams and relatives that are still alive, we are going to not recognize what is the reality reality and which one doesn't.

Wow, that's very insightful.

So, Lui Chacon Jimenez, thank you for coming onto Always off the Record.

Always off the Record.

It's always off the record.

So it's the best way.

Thank you, Amalia.

Thank you.