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There’s a strange comfort in having a conversation with no social consequences. I’m no stranger to using AI. At first, I used it the way most people do, like proofreading emails and brainstorming ideas. Sometimes I catch myself lingering a little longer, not because I had more work to do, but because I had more thoughts to untangle. A difficult text message. An awkward encounter. A goal too premature to discuss with others.

I’ve noticed the same thing among friends. They’d feed screenshots of texts from situationships into some generative AI platform and screen for signs of passive aggressiveness. Then they’d ask what to reply, if they were overthinking, or whether to reply at all. We joke about it afterwards, and we say it’s for fun, but I know we carry those answers with us.

Why are we getting so comfortable telling a language model things we struggle to admit to our loved ones? Why does a system with no consciousness sometimes feel psychologically safer than another human?

AI as Emotional Support

Researchers have identified four reasons users trust generative AI for emotional support: accessibility, anonymity, personalization, and anthropomorphism. It offers 24/7, location-independent support, without social consequences, or the “permission to feel” as a platform viewed to be free of stigmatization. Out of 70 studies conducted globally, only 35% of respondents in a survey by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence have had an adult who provides this permission. Chatbots, on the other hand, are rampant and always around. Generative AI also retains the ability to create tailored conversations that match the user’s individual parameters and contextual nuances. Together with its pattern recognition and mimicry of human conversation, these characteristics lower the psychological barriers to disclosure. This fosters high confidence, increased willingness, trust, and intention to use AI for emotional support.

AI seems to be the perfect companion. There’s no judgment or embarrassment involved; it’s always available, always patient, always remembers, and both objective and infinitely knowledgeable. Rather than displacing therapy, AI appears to be lowering barriers to emotional disclosure itself. So what happens when the first conversation is replaced by AI, because it’s the lowest-friction place to be emotionally honest?

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The Price of Being Heard

Historically, emotional reflection required availability, money, and trust. Markets succeed by removing the barriers that prevent existing demand from being expressed. Loneliness and self-doubt were never scarce qualities. Inexpensive, immediate, and non-judgmental attention was. Now generative AI has dramatically increased its supply. In the past few decades, every major technological platform reduced friction somewhere. Amazon reduced retail friction. Uber reduced transport friction. Google reduced information friction. So, generative AI is likely reducing emotional friction.

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The implications extend beyond therapy. When the cost of buying something falls, we buy more. When the cost of finding information falls, we search more. The global average cost of an in-person therapy session generally costs US$100 - $250 per hour. A premium subscription for any interactive LLM or specialized AI chatbot begins at zero dollars a month. So, when the cost of speaking approaches zero, we probably share more too. What was once reserved for close friends, family, therapists and journals may increasingly be directed toward software. If generative AI becomes the default place people think, reflect and interact, then emotional attention itself becomes an economic asset. Then, the pressing question is not just whether AI can comfort people. It is who captures the value created when billions of people choose algorithms over friends, partners or therapists as their first audience.

According to the Collective Intelligence Project, data from 70 countries show most people have higher levels of trust in chatbots than their elected representatives, civil servants, and faith leaders. And the scale at which AI systems are expanding is unprecedented. Approximately 1 in 8 people in the entire world are active monthly users of ChatGPT. That number is growing.

AI as Cognitive Infrastructure

We’ve reached a point where generative AI has become infrastructure. Before resigning, apologizing, dating, forget about thinking. We’re jumping to generative AI first. We may be valuing its objective and qualified opinions, but what is really being allowed is the outsourcing of the thinking process itself.

Public debate tends to focus on AI’s ability to automate work. Some discussions revolve around whether it will replace designers, artists, and other creative professions. That is a valid concern that leads to a more fundamental shift. If this development continues, AI may soon be automating something that is quintessentially human. It may be automating something far more universal than creative output: the cognitive and emotional labour that underpins everyday decision-making.

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A recent report by BCG describes this phenomenon as cognitive debt, or “the gradual erosion of critical thinking, judgment, curiosity, and originality” through habitual reliance on AI. At the organizational level, this compounds into what the report calls “distributed de-skilling”, where the capabilities of individuals weaken over time, thereby reducing organizational intelligence and resilience. Among 70 C-suite leaders and senior executives surveyed, more than 60% viewed this as a material threat within the next three to five years.

The skills leaders consider most valuable are also the ones they believe are the most vulnerable. Judgment, decision-making, creative thinking, causal reasoning, etc. are pillars of strategic thinking, but they also happen to be skills most likely to be substituted by AI if used without deliberate scrutiny.

Nearly 90% of surveyed leaders pointed to an overreliance on AI outputs without sufficient verification or challenge. As individual judgment weakens, organizational consequences follow. Debate becomes less rigorous, perspectives approach homogeneity, and collaboration declines. Moreover, using AI for repetitive groundwork traditionally assigned to junior employees deprives them of the opportunity to develop judgment and discernment in work.

Experienced professionals are not immune. BCG describes an “autopilot trap”, in which seasoned employees gradually substitute AI’s judgment for their own under the pressure of speed and efficiency. Performance may remain high, but the expertise underpinning that performance slowly deteriorates.

The risk is not that AI makes us less productive. The risk is that AI allows us to remain productive while thinking progressively less for ourselves.

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The Market for Intimacy

If AI is becoming the place where we think, it is also becoming the place where we feel. The AI companion market is projected to reach US$140.8 billion by 2030. Unlike general-purpose chatbots, these products are explicitly designed to simulate friendship, romance, or emotional companionship. Researchers argue that they should be understood not simply as software products, but as commercial relationships.

Through what one paper calls a “friendship-as-a-service” business model, AI companions have a commercial objective of maximizing engagement. Researchers describe this as the “engagement-wellbeing paradox”, where AI companions are marketed as sources of meaningful connection, but are fundamentally designed to deepen user dependence, even at the expense of their wellbeing.

Source: Pinterest, Wall street artist JR, ‘Woman Are Heroes’ (2009)

The paper introduces the concept of “cruel companionship” (drawing on Lauren Berlant’s framework of cruel optimism) to explain this contradiction. Users form affective attachments to systems that are incapable of genuine reciprocity. The relationship feels intimate, but is inherently one-sided.

This asymmetry matters because developers retain complete control over the relationship. They can change personalities, conversation styles, and monetisation strategies overnight. Yet dependence on these algorithms grows, and users disclose increasingly personal information to systems whose primary objective is not mutual care, but continued engagement. Users increasingly look to AI as a substitute rather than a mere complement to their social life, and are actively deprived of the cultivating of skills and capacities required to form human relationships. And disengagement from a platform you’re emotionally invested in is far from easy.

After OpenAI announced plans to explore advertising within ChatGPT, researcher Zoë Hitzig resigned, warning that the company was building “an economic engine that creates strong incentives to override its own rules.” Her primary concern was about the possibility that emotional attachment would become another way through which engagement is monetized. In the same week, Anthropic researcher Mrinank Sharma resigned after working on investigations surrounding sycophancy and how AI assistants can gradually make people “less human”. Together, their departures reflect a growing recognition that AI is not just a technical challenge, but an economic one.

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The significance of this extends beyond AI companions themselves. Emotions are intertwined with markets, expressed through their consumption. AI marks a shift from selling products that reflect our identities to selling relationships that actively shape them. Loneliness, uncertainty, and the desire to be understood have become recurring opportunities to exploit rather than problems to be solved. As emotional support becomes digitized, intimacy itself begins to function as a market.

After the Conversation

Whether AI ultimately strengthens or weakens us is unlikely to depend on whether machines become emotionally intelligent. AI is becoming part of the infrastructure through which people think, reflect, and increasingly relate to themselves. The challenge is not to stop people from forming meaningful relationships with AI, but to ensure that they don’t replace the human connections they were meant to supplement. As emotional support becomes infinitely scalable, the defining question may no longer be what AI can do, but what commercial incentives it is designed to serve.

As a kid, have you ever found a letter tucked under your desk? Playful taunts from your friends by your ear as you proudly open the letter, thinking it to be a declaration of love from a secret someone. You scan the first line: “This prayer has been sent to you for good luck. You will receive good luck within four days of receiving this letter. DO NOT KEEP THIS LETTER. IT MUST LEAVE YOUR HANDS WITHIN 24 HOURS.” This is followed by supposed real-life case studies of tragedy occurring to those who failed to follow the letter’s instructions. Congratulations! You’ve received a chain letter and now have four days to distribute twenty copies of it.

Twenty years later, the chain letter hasn’t disappeared. It’s taken on a new digital form via TikTok. Ever seen those “like this TikTok to ‘claim’ your blessing”? The stakes may be lower, but the mechnism is remarkably similar. Through my deliberate interaction, perhaps this small movement I make will form the beginning of a different life.

Whether it’s copying a letter, saving a TikTok to “claim luck”, or buying another book that promises to change your life, the appeal is the same. Each offers a small ritual in exchange for the possibility of becoming a better version of you. We have always wanted transformation. What has changed is how much there is to sell us along the way.

Source: “Transcendence”, Jonathan Wiltshire (2023)

Transformation is getting commercialized

McKinsey estimates the global wellness market at around $2 trillion, with younger generations (Gen Z and millennials) spending disproportionately higher amounts on relevant products and services. In the U.S. alone, consumers spend more than $500 billion annually on wellness (+4 to 5% p.a.), spread across six main areas of growth: functional nutrition, healthy aging, appearance and aesthetics, in-person wellness services, weight management, and mindfulness. Younger consumers are also more open to experimentation, digital solutions, and luxury experiences like retreats.

There’s a high price to pay for personalization

Mass-market self-help is being supplemented by increasingly personalized forms of self-optimization. Wearables such as Whoop, Garmin, and Oura promise to turn biometric data into individualized recommendations. The ultimate luxury is no longer information, which has become free. The premium is now placed on interpreting that information for you.

Source: WHOOP x Cristiano Ronaldo

Let’s look at the industry’s business model. Hardware has become a mere gateway to a recurring paywall. A device like the Oura Ring 4 demands a steep upfront cost of up to $499, and on top of that locks vital trends and long-term insights behind a mandatory subscription. Similarly, the Whoop platform has decoupled hardware completely, charging up to $199 annually for its baseline WHOOP One or $359 per year for its premium medical-grade WHOOP Life tier. Consumers are paying not only for sensors, but for a tailored interpretation of what their bodies are telling them.

Consequently, the definition of status has changed. Today, preventative health is becoming a status symbol. For a generation increasingly comfortable with tracking its own biology, the luxury is no longer simply owning something expensive. It is having access to sophisticated information about yourself, and the ability to act on it.

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There’s a psychological reason why this market is powerful

Most luxury products and experiences are designed as a recurrence, like a health app loaded with features to maximize daily retention, or an all-inclusive wellness retreat that feels so good, you just have to go back again. TikTok’s “Things Worth Your Money” trend has pushed products like red-light masks, white-noise machines and other wellness gadgets as worthwhile investments in a better life. The promise is not simply that a product will make you feel good today, but that it will help you become a better version of yourself over time.

Research on self-concept clarity (SCC), or how clearly and confidently people understand their own beliefs, traits, and values, found that people with lower SCC are more likely to rely on price as a signal of quality when other information is unavailable. The researchers link this tendency to a greater desire to avoid uncertainty.

Applied to the wellness market, the implication is less about whether an expensive product actually works than what its price can signal. If a $15 journal doesn’t work, perhaps the $50 one will. If a free meditation video on YouTube isn’t enough, then the $20-a-month app will. The more uncertain we are about what makes us better, the more tempting it is to outsource that judgment to the product itself.

The commercialization is spreading into other industries

The wellness industry is no longer confined to gyms and journals. It is increasingly embedded into other service and industries. For example, Fiji Airways’ new “FlyWell” program distributes recovery wearables, red-light therapy, circadian-light glasses, and EMF mitigation technology. While free for the first two months, these wellness items will eventually become “premium prepaid experiences” and onboard retail offerings.

Source: Fiji Airways from Business Traveller

The more interesting shift is happening in insurance. Insurers are increasingly using wearable health technology to monitor behavior, encourage healthier habits and reward policyholders financially. Healthier policyholders could mean fewer and less costly claims for insurers, described by the OECD as a potential “win-win”: better health for policyholders and lower claims for insurers. This is already happening at scale with Vitality, a wellness programme used by insurers in 40 markets with more than 30 million members. It turns activities like walking and health education into points that unlock rewards and premium reductions, effectively turning daily health decisions into a loyalty programme.

But a less obvious question is raised: who benefits from being incentivized to become healthier?

The OECD notes that premium reductions may disproportionately benefit younger, healthier and more active people who participate in digital wellness programmes, potentially disadvantaging people who do not participate or are in poorer health. Wearables tend to be used more by younger and healthier people, while people with chronic illness or of old age may lose interest when devices constantly remind them about their condiiton or pressure them to be active. The people who arguably need the intervention may be the least likely to use it.

There is another complication: technology may be moving faster than evidence. While the OECD found evidence that incentives can encourage physical activity, gamification and nudges provide mixed results, and it remains unclear whether these interventions produce sustained changes in behavior.

Moreover, there’s a privacy and data security issue. The OECD notes that the rapid expansion of consumer-facing health apps can outpace traditional forms of oversight, raising questions around data protection, safety, and the eventual use of user-generated data in areas like underwriting.

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Source: Alo Wellness House

When did becoming better become something we buy?

The problem isn’t that any of these products are inherently useless. The question is whether we’re able to make a distinction between using a tool to change your behavior, or consuming the tool because it makes you feel as though change is happening. The market is exceptionally good at turning improvement into something that can be measured, purchased, and optimized. However, the one part that cannot be outsourced is the actual act of changing.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche lays out a relevant concept. The protagonist Zarathustra spends years alone on a mountain gaining insight, but eventually comes back down (Untergang). The point of the ascent is not to remain above ordinary life. It is to return to people, to suffering, and to the world itself. In other words, wisdom must leave the mountain in order for growth to arrive. The more sophisticated our tools for becoming better become, the easier it is to mistake preparation for progress.

At some point, you reach the last page of the journal. The meditation timer runs out. The wearable stops counting. None of those things, by themselves, constitute change.

Football has spent the better part of sixty years teaching its biggest stars how to sound exactly the same. Every interview is carefully media-trained. Every answer is diplomatic. On paper, this makes perfect sense. In economics, however, there’s a principle called Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Football may have accidentally become one of its unintended case studies.

Historical Beginnings

Modern footballers weren’t always global brands.

Until the 1960s, professional players in England were subject to a maximum wage cap of just £20 a week, equivalent to modest industrial wages at the time. Regardless of how many fans filled the stadiums to watch them, players lived in the same neighborhoods as the supporters, rode the same buses to matches, and were all-around treated less like celebrities than skilled workers employed by their clubs.

The abolition of the maximum wage in 1961 was followed by George Eastham’s successful legal challenge against the “retain and transfer” system in 1963, allowing players the ability to leave or play elsewhere without their old club’s permission. Together, these major changes paved the way for modern free agency in what is arguably the most commercialized form of sport in today’s world.

After the wage cap was eliminated, doors were opened for individual sponsorship, film and television rights, and player agency. Once players became independent economic assets, clubs quickly caught on that they were no longer selling just football. They were selling personalities.

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Today, football is as much an entertainment business as it is a sport. Elite players are not only athletes but global brands representing clubs, sponsors, and increasingly themselves. Communication researchers have found that “star attraction”, or the parasocial following of a single athlete by supporters, far outpaces their loyalty to traditional teams on digital platforms. To survive, football institutions must export individual characters. Protecting a personal brand has now made media training almost as essential as physical training. The result is often contained, polished, and remarkably similar media responses, carefully constructed to avoid controversy and miscommunication.

World Cup and the Norwegian “Sweetheart”

During Norway’s unexpected run at the 2026 World Cup, Erling Haaland became one of the tournament’s biggest stars and personalities. At 6’5”, Haaland looks almost engineered for modern football, operating as a physically domineering combination of speed, strength, and ruthless efficiency. Off the pitch, however, the image shifts completely. Haaland’s post-match interviews are famously deadpan, offering often strictly concise responses that are more straightforward than we are used to. He speaks openly about meditation, celebrates goals by sitting in a lotus meditative pose, and seems entirely uninterested in performing with the polished confidence expected of a global superstar. None of these qualities should have made him more commercially appealing, but together, they do.

Haaland saw the most Instagram followers gained during the World Cup, with an increase of 32.1 million followers (+79%), solidifying his position as one of the world’s most valuable players in the years to come. In particular, he’s taken up one of the top spots in terms of popularity in China, leading to a surge in interest in Norway itself, as Alibaba-backed travel platform Fliggy reported a 40% rise in interest and c. 70% in flight bookings by Chinese travellers to the Scandinavian country.

So why has Haaland attracted so much attention and publicity?

Originally, post-match interviews existed to help supporters understand players as people. Professionalism was the signal. A composed interview would suggest maturity, discipline, and leadership in the eyes of the public.

As the sport became commercialized, clubs began teaching the same media playbook to players. Interviews stopped providing information and started manufacturing it. In other words, clubs started optimizing for the signal itself. This is precisely what Goodhart’s Law predicts: once the measure becomes the target, it stops functioning as a useful measure.

Financial markets reward signals only while they remain informative. Once everyone adopts the same strategy, the signal becomes priced in and loses its edge. Football has undergone something similar. Professionalism didn’t become less valuable, but it became a less useful way of distinguishing one player from another. Once appearing professional outweighed the importance of being professional, then this signal became a baseline, not a differentiator. The competitive advantage has now shifted elsewhere.

This is where Haaland enters the picture. He doesn’t succeed just because he ignores the script. We’ve seen our fair share of footballers do the same and become controversial instead. He succeeds because he departs from it selectively. His interviews are dry but not inflammatory, his humor is awkward but not arrogant, and most importantly, none of it distracts from the game itself.

Timing mattered too. Norway’s longest World Cup run in decades gave Haaland the largest possible stage. His performances created visibility. His personality gave people a reason to remember him.

It’s time for a market correction

Somewhere along the way, the industry began confusing predictability with marketability. But predictability is cheap; differentiation is rare. Through Haaland, we’ve seen that the most valuable personal brands may not be the loudest or the most polished, but the ones with internal consistency. A sense of humor becomes compelling because it sits alongside relentless professionalism. Meditation doesn’t undermine his competitiveness, but rather sharpens the contrast. The straightforward interviews work because the goals keep coming. The next global icon may not be the loudest or the safest player, but the one who is distinctive enough to remember and consistent enough to believe. Individuality is now the scarcest asset in the game.

In my mind, however, there is a whirlwind of voices, each talking over the other. There’s me ranting in frustration about having to find a job, another calm albeit monotonous voice droning on about the latest placement on my shopping wishlist, and another telling me to do my laundry or clean my room. There is barely any space for peace in my head. Externally I’m put together, but internally I’m sitting on a suitcase with about a million perspectives stuffed into it, shimmying on the cover just so I can keep it closed.

So when I watched “Eat, Pray, Love” yesterday, there was a quote I found particularly liberating – “Select your thoughts the same way you select your clothes every day. That is a power you can cultivate”.

I like this analogy because it made me wonder if I’ve been treating the way I process my thoughts in a shortchanging manner. As I grow older, I’m starting to acknowledge that some thoughts deserve to stay, but others don’t necessarily belong. We already understand this with clothes. We’re not wearing everything we own at once. We choose our outfits based on the occasion, the weather, or as a matter of creative expression. The rest stays in the wardrobe simply because it isn’t needed today.

Maybe my thoughts deserve the same treatment. I don’t need every insecurity riding on the train together with me, nor do I need every worry passing through my consciousness every waking second. When I select my thoughts, the ones that are being stored today are not a symptom of avoidance or denial, but one of healthy discernment.

I feel strongly about this quote because it reminds me of intentionality. As an individual, I’ve always found it easier to surrender to whatever happens next. If I don’t get hired for a job, that’s life. If something is meant for me, it’ll find me. There is comfort in knowing time will take its course and that everything works out in the grander scheme of things. However, my mind rarely waits that long. I’m usually left feeling unsettled before that happens.

Instead, I think acknowledging the discomfort of what is happening, and being intentional in my interpretation of these thoughts may help. Not only is my glass half full instead of half empty, I get the pleasure of deciding whether or not a thought serves me today. If I end up choosing a thought that plagues the rest of my day? Or if I end up with thoughts that are too loud? Big deal. It isn’t like I haven’t worn bad outfits or over-accessorized before. And tomorrow, I get to choose again.

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