AI Companions promote EQ (Emotional Intelligence)
A Perspective on AI from a Gen Z Builder
For most, using AI can feel like the vortex. Even for people that use it every day it feels like there's so much that you may not be using. If you look at some of the upcoming startups in SF or NY you'll see so many vertical & horizontal AI startups. Each claiming something different, but something like "our product helps you with x and uses AI." It probably does, but how do you know which one to choose from when 5 do the same thing and it's too early to identify a winner? Will the future be a marketplace of tools to use? Or a marketplace of agents? Or will a lot of products build agents tailored to your work? So there is no more copy/paste agent. A product(s) builds the agents you need. As someone who wants to build an AI startup, it's hard to identify where I have any right to win. As a small business it can feel very uncertain on how to use AI because there is no for-certain rule book. Which I think will come, but everything is evolving right now and it's the entrepreneur's job to be on the forefront and keep building it. That's the real right to win in this era. But in 5 years there will be a playbook on how to use AI for your business and then everyone will have a much easier adoption. Feb 2026: 3% of US households pay for AI (BofA) and only 24% of people use AI chatbots daily in the US (pew). Pretty gnarly considering it's all the hype. So to be clear, the adoption is not there (although it's the fastest-adopted tech ever), and it's a problem for people for a variety of reasons. But my point is there is no easy way to understand how to use it. Opening Claude, there's a million ways to use it. It makes no sense to the average person. Neither AI nor the person is rising to their fullest potential with each other.
Where it's going: Thinking about the future, knowing AI will only advance, the idea of super intelligence — which will be, as Elon says, "smarter than all humans" — is very true. At that point, in my mind, our lives could very likely look something like this. Whoever has wearable tech like a Whoop that tracks most of their vitals will now have an AI layer on top of that. Meaning it can tell when you're stressed out or when you have a dopamine spike, or when you are mad or sad. Beyond just feeling detection, it will be able to connect with what I see as everyone having their own bot they go through life with. So it can tell where you are and potentially who you're with. Context is a big piece of what allows AI to be so capable of larger tasks like tracking your feelings and how they correlate with your life. So if you wear Meta glasses it will have all the context to see real time while connected to your vitals or "feelings." Beyond that, your AI bot will be so intelligent it will help you process some of your hardest problems. These bots will be able to understand emotions from a human. AI models are made to achieve a directed task, but they don't have emotions (yet). So when its goal is to help you it's going to add the fluff to help you in whatever that may be. I imagine we have deep conversations with our bots daily and they act as a second brain for us. Which, whether you like it or not, people that have it are at an advantage.
Then there's the idea of computer vision. Most places you look there's already sensors & cameras. Adding intelligence into them, the world looks very different and there is no more sneaky. Beyond just identifying theft in a store or speeding or running stop lights, it could flow more into life than we can comprehend right now. A good example could be never having to wait to fill up your drink at a bar again or getting workout analytics from your gym. But more importantly, the business owners that have venues will have access to a much larger variety of analytics/data as a result of computer vision.
Beyond all of this optimism/prediction there will, without a doubt, be regulation, which is much harder to predict right now but crucial to keep in mind.
The models are capable of becoming side companions to every human right now. It's just a matter of gathering context consistently and identifying data gaps within someone's life to fully provide the most value. (As well as token cost and some model power) It won't be something you talk to weekly. You will talk to this every day and every new thing in your life it will also know. This thought could be scary but also hopeful because it allows for much more in self-discovery. The ongoing act of self-discovery is something lacking within the average person.
Whether you agree or not, the more someone discovers themselves, the more unique they are. In a world of AI doing a lot of work where people find identity, becoming more unique is very important. Unique could mean finding your passion or being more aligned with your emotions (emotional intelligence, EQ).
How do AI companion bots grow EQ? When using a bot turns into a subconscious daily action, it will have the intelligence to understand everything about you. From what you're doing that day, week, month, or the hard conversation you had with your girlfriend last night on the phone. Or the 3 hours of brain rot scrolling you did the day before and the effects that had on your body (via wearable tech). The only other person that should really understand all of the deepest things about you is your therapist. So now it's in your pocket. So daily actions, vitals/feelings, and difficult conversations/thoughts paired with deep intelligence, you get a bot that understands you extremely well. So when directed at helping you become your fullest self, it will have the ability to ask questions about yourself that you may not have realized. These questions are what I see as the true self-discovery. Where you grow your emotional intelligence and rise to a fuller self.
If EQ is an accurate perception of your own state plus the ability to act on it, a system that reflects your state back to you with evidence is a training loop for exactly that skill.
