Reducing Loneliness: AI or Human?

Researchers from the University of British Columbia found that first-semester college students who texted a randomly selected fellow first-semester college student every day for two weeks experienced around a nine percent reduction in feelings of loneliness. The same two weeks of daily messaging with a Discord chatbot reduced loneliness by around two percent, which turned out to be the same amount as daily one-sentence journaling. -404 Media

A more meaningful study might be to teach the LLM to mimic a first semester student of the same economic and social background as the person who is part of the study.