If a student feels remembered by a machine but overlooked by humans, something in the educational contract has broken, says Agnieszka Piotrowska. One of my research students told me recently, almost apologetically, that he sometimes turns to ChatGPT “as an emotional crutch”. He said it seemed to understand him better than his therapist. When I asked why, he said, “It remembers me, my problems and my stories better.” He did not tell me which model he used. I did not ask. We both felt faintly embarrassed, and I am sure this conversation was only possible because psychoanalysis is one of my core disciplines. Students are not supposed to form emotional attachments to software. Academics are not supposed to recognise the loneliness that makes such attachments imaginable. And yet here we are.
