In this era of rapidly changing online technology, we need to restore the original AI—the wisdom of Attachment Intelligence. ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs) have invaded education, creativity, therapy, and even our most intimate relationships. As these tools encroach on raising our kids, it’s critical to understand what our children need in order to realize their full human potential.
Historically, we didn’t need Artificial Intelligence. Traditional, multigenerational cultures were woven together with Attachment Intelligence—and still are—without ever needing to be conscious of it. The stories, customs, language, food, relationships, music, celebrations, and values of the community are cared for and passed generation-to-generation.
We’re now confronted with anthropomorphic artificial chatbots—deployed as human-imitating companions and confidantes—that threaten to eliminate the need for parents, elders, friends and partners altogether. Conversation-simulating bots are just one of the growing assaults on the fabric of attachment. The escalating interference of LLMs demands a human response: a resurgence of Attachment Intelligence.
The Insidious Erosion of Embodied Attachment
Artificial Intelligence is a new tool in a long lineage of insidious erosions to our attachment experiences. There are many parenting shortcuts that appear initially to decrease the parenting workload. Behaviorist B.F. Skinner attempted to decrease the labour of parenting with positive reinforcements, an idea that gained massive traction and still dominates parenting practices today. He convinced us that raising children required rewards—trinkets like smiley face stickers, stars, “wins,” and marks—essentially tricks to gain their compliance and good behavior. This approach is an offense to Attachment Intelligence; it encourages children to work for their birthright: our love and closeness.
Other varieties of attachment displacement are disguised in a myriad of seemingly innocent forms. Saturday morning TV reduces relational demands on parents. Peer Orientation camouflages the weight of parenting, keeping children busy with friends so they appear not to need us. Smartphones keep them entertained and quiet. These relational labour hacks, however, can quietly erode the attachment between children and their caregivers. It’s not that our kids can’t ever watch TV, have friends, or use social media, however we miss the true impact on our relationships entirely if we don’t understand the workings of Attachment Intelligence.
Whenever we take a shortcut, we must ask: what is the cost? Attachment hacking has never truly satisfied our kids’ needs. What is Nature’s answer to the weight of parenting? When raising a child, we’re meant to have a supporting network of relatives and surrogate family who help nourish both the parents and the children. We’re not meant to parent alone! Parents today face a world that’s often devoid of the village that’s needed to sustain family life.
The digital world came crashing into kids’ lives between 2010 and 2015 with the introduction of the smartphone. Adopted enthusiastically, cell phones quickly extended the reach and impact of peer orientation. Parents and kids alike worried that they wouldn’t have friends and wouldn’t fit in if they didn’t have a phone. Their peers became available to them at all hours of the day and night, times which used to be reserved for family.
Hijacking the Reward System
What is it about these technologies that grips us so intensely? Our digital devices are engineered to keep us scrolling using slot-machine-type variable rewards. Our attachment circuitry is hijacked with lots of dopamine hits, giving our brains an illusion of connection every time a “Like” is manufactured. This variable reinforcement leaves us yearning for more, because it is almost fulfilling, but doesn’t quite satisfy. Tech companies took advantage of the natural reward system of the brain and created an Attention Economy with bottomless feeds, rapid short cuts and auto-play videos. How do we find a way back into relationship when competing with something designed to hijack and addict our attachment-wired brains?
Many young people no longer seek relationships with the adults in their lives, preferring their devices more than us. Ravenous for connection, they rarely understand what—or why—they seek. They chase a sense of belonging and mattering while remaining isolated and lonely. This is another insidious erosion of attachment design: life feels hard because it wasn’t meant to be lived this way. A child in this state will never be freed from their relational hunger. The reward system belongs in human relationships. Indeed, the first generation to adopt heavy smartphone use has shown a dramatic increase in emotional challenges, including depression and anxiety.
If we can’t figure out how to restore our lead and invite dependence in our children, we are quite literally leaving them to their own devices. In this crucible where machines are logarithmically powerful in their ability to trick our attachment brains, we need to strengthen our atrophied but innate Attachment Intelligence to see that what’s considered normal is very different from what’s ideal.
The Artificial Intimacy of Today’s AI
Just 3.5 years ago, ChatGPT entered the online world and intensely changed the attachment landscape. Now children talk to teddy bears that respond with programmed affection. Adolescents seek companionship with their compelling human-like conversation bots and often report ‘they’ are better at meeting their need for belonging, significance, love and being known, than the people in their lives. These technologies are taking destructive advantage of our most fundamental human need, for human relationships in which we are deeply and warmly invited.
According to the AI Psychological Research Coalition, 25% of Americans and approximately 5% of global citizens are using anthropomorphic conversational chatbots. This suggests that 5-25% of the population may not have meaningful, fulfilling relationships in which their primordial need for attachment is satisfied. Substituting LLLMs for human relationship, however, comes with relational, developmental and emotional costs. As artificial intimacy gains a foothold, and the Attention Economy is paired with the subsequent Attachment Economy, the need for Attachment Intelligence—our natural resistance to the digital fast food we’re ingesting—becomes even more urgent.
Now, our relationships are threatened by the very tools we give kids for school and adults for work. Attachment hacking is turbocharged, targeting reward centers in the brain without delivering the real goods. With all the buzz about machine learning—both positive and negative—it’s easy to get swept away with the thought, “Well, we’re all attached to our phones. It’s happening anyway, so we may as well get used to it.”
This is not inevitable, however. Machine learning has potential benefits when it comes to math and logic. It’s a different story when algorithms are aimed at our most vulnerable people, including children, and lead to addiction, self-harm and an erosion of embodied attachment. When our teens feel alone and don’t have a true sense of belonging, the tech industry invites them to form “friendships” with their products. With machines. With programs. A child who does not have fruitful real-life relationships with significant adults will be most vulnerable to this kind of attachment hacking.
It’s harder now than ever to hold on to our kids while our most important relationship needs are being mined for profit. We need to learn how to deal with attachment competition from peers, social media, endless dopamine-fueling feeds, and conversational chatbots. It is now evident that they do in fact have the power to displace us as parents, teachers, mentors, partners, friends and therapists. “But aren’t we meant to let go of our kids at some point?” you might ask. “Absolutely,” says Dr. Neufeld, “but only when our job is done and only in order for them to be themselves.”
The Ancient Wisdom of Attachment Intelligence
Attachment, the science of relationship, is much more than baby bonding. Parenting has never been about tricks, shortcuts or tools. Genuine closeness is our preeminent need—before food or shelter. Fulfilling contact and closeness is what serves human survival—because by being close to those who care for us, we are nourished, physically and emotionally, and can feel safe enough to rest—so that Nature can do the work of growing us up.
Our relationship capacity is developed over the first six years of life if conditions are ideal, but attachment serves us our entire lives. The primary purpose of attachment is to ensure we take care of those we’re attached to. A child needs at least one adult they can experience this caring with. This is the foundation upon which children reach their full human potential. By providing for their dependency needs, independence follows naturally: Attachment gives birth to personhood.
The more adults in a child’s life, the better, but all it takes is one. The beautiful truth is that it’s never too late: If we’re not flourishing because of a lack of attachment, when a fruitful relationship is provided, development can still unfold. If we never have someone who provides generously for our relational and dependency needs, Nature still has an answer. When we grieve the relationships we lacked, the sadness and disappointment act as an engine of maturation and grow us up despite not having healthy attachments. We need to protect the hearts of our children and students so that their ability to feel vulnerably and to grow freely is preserved.
Social media, LLMs, and other online technologies pose legitimate threats to healthy attachment in our families and our lives. But they haven’t robbed us of our agency, our deep desire to care for our people, or our ability to observe what’s happening and what’s needed. We can use our human gifts to mitigate exploitation of our human vulnerabilities. We can learn to use our own AI––the wisdom of Attachment Intelligence—to guide us in our parenting and relating. Below are some ways we can begin.
Guidelines for Restoring the Original AI: Attachment Intelligence Applied
How can we embody Attachment Intelligence and buffer the influence of today’s Artificial Intelligence? What is our role in safeguarding our children from the lure of artificial intimacy?
- Be the answer to their longing for relationship: We do not need to have the answers but we need instead to be the answer—to our child’s relational needs, for a feeling of belonging, a sense of mattering, for being loved and being known.
- Give them a taste of real human relational fulfillment so they are not going into the world hungry, but satiated and able to know the difference between artificial and real human connection.
- Be a BUFFER to the pressures of society and the online world, and to premature access to platforms with anthropomorphic artificial intimacy. Don’t let your children be raised by machines.
- Reclaim them if necessary. Recognize when they’re at risk of becoming attached to peers, screens and human-like chatbots at the expense of your relationship and invite them generously back into relationship with you and other caring adults.
- Embed them in cascading care. Lean on those who came before us—parents, ancestors, teachers, mentors, God—so that we can provide generously in a hierarchical arrangement, in which we take care of the young.
- Safeguard their hearts and provide emotional rest—so they can adapt to losses and to relationships that don’t work.
- Preserve Play as it is a fundamental sanctuary for emotion and a place of rest.
