Answered means a dedicated research page exists. Partial means the closest research covers part of it. Open means it is on the roadmap and not yet written. Every question has its own link. Last reviewed: 3 November 2026 · Next review due: 3 November 2027.
AnsweredShould AI remember everything about me?#
Privacy is the smaller half. The larger half is that a system which remembers everything gets better at telling you what you want to hear.
- Robot Roommate: Extends the question into the home, where the machine is present rather than summoned, and the data is domestic life itself.
AnsweredIs it bad to talk to AI when you are lonely?#
Relief during the chat in experiments; heavier use goes with more loneliness or lower well-being in a four-week trial, a twelve-month survey and a Character.AI study, and none shows cause.
AnsweredShould I use AI to write personal messages?#
The apology and condolence cases are where this gets sharp, because effort is the signal being sent.
- The Thing That Proves You're Human: Answers it more directly than the research page can: the artefact is not the point, being the author of it is, and automating it removes the only thing it was carrying.
AnsweredWho gets credit when the kind words were generated?#
Recognition follows visible output, and AI makes the expression of noticing someone cheap to produce and hard to attribute.
AnsweredShould AI summarise everything I read?#
The summary is not the thing. Open, and the reading-comprehension evidence is relevant and under-used.
AnsweredDo I still need to remember things?#
You cannot verify an answer in a domain where you never built competence. Offload the storage, keep the judgement.
- Multi-source Learning: An explicit refusal of the know-less thesis in February 2024, arguing we need to learn more but differently, before the offloading literature made this contested.
AnsweredHow do I keep my own voice?#
Ownership tracks how much of you went into the prompt, and nobody has tested whether writers notice their own flattening.
AnsweredShould I let AI make personal decisions for me?#
Advice from a model with no settled view still moves yours, disclosure does not reduce the effect, and 80 per cent believe they decided unaided.
AnsweredHow much should teenagers use AI?#
The children page is age-banded. A version written for the teenager rather than about them is still open.
- What I Tell Parents About AI: Argues the metric is wrong. What matters is not hours but whether the social world is contracting from ten people to a thousand to one.
PartialDoes it matter if the empathy is simulated?#
AI-generated replies have been rated as making recipients feel more heard than untrained humans, and labelling them as AI removed the advantage.
- The Thing That Proves You're Human: The essay the term came from, including the hospital scene that made the argument personal rather than theoretical.
OpenWhat do AI companions do to children?#
Bill Gates raised this in August 2026, saying he doubted he would have put in the same work with a companion available. A hypothesis, not a finding.
- Robot Roommate: Argues presence rather than intelligence is the threshold that matters, which applies to a humanoid in the living room and to a chatbot alike.
- Simulacra, Copying Humans and AGI: The earliest warning in this body of work, April 2023, taken from research showing generative agents rated more convincingly human than humans role-playing the same characters.
OpenShould I use AI for relationship advice?#
Open. Where it helps, and where it substitutes for a person who should have been told.
The other territories
- Me and AI 39
- Thinking 40
- Judgement 211
- Learning 88
- Students and university 90
- Career 52
- Skills 46
- Work 125
- Leadership 130
- Organisations 134
- Talent 110
- Everyday life 31
- Evidence and the wider picture 89
- What AI is and where it's going 68
- Agents and autonomy 86
- Professions and sectors 96
- Economics and value 24
- Operating model 19
- Boards and directors 56
The same questions, cut by who is asking: boards and directors, chros and hr leaders, school and university leaders, university students, early career and graduates, managers and team leads, regulated and expert professions, parents.
Reference · SS-2026-455 · How I use AI here
Hirji, R. (2026). Memory, companions and the personal: questions about AI. The SuperSkills evidence base, SS-2026-455. https://thesuperskills.com/research/questions/companions. Last reviewed 3 November 2026.
An evidence review by Rahim Hirji, not peer-reviewed research. For a material claim, cite the underlying study as well; every study here carries its own permanent link.
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