Three social skills too important to delegate to AI

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“AI is helping me with my social skills,” one of my therapy clients told me. He experienced social anxiety and had started asking AI for scripts to say whenever he felt nervous.

At a recent dinner party, when he felt overwhelmed by all the insightful questions the other guests were asking, he slipped away for a restroom break. He asked AI to create a list of questions that would make him a more interesting conversationalist so he could be well-liked. He returned to the dinner table armed with questions and a little more confidence.

Like many people, he hoped AI would hand him a social shortcut, one that would make him less anxious in the long run. Unfortunately, his AI use was actually hampering his social growth. While those scripts gave him a momentary confidence boost, they were making him less socially adept over time.

As a therapist, I’m seeing my people hand over three common social practices to AI, and it’s simultaneously eroding their confidence and social skills. They are:

1) Everyday conversations

Many people tell me they’re looking for help finding the right words when they’re meeting new people, going on a date, or trying to get to know an acquaintance better. And it’s not just inside my therapy office.

After a recent keynote speech I gave, an attendee confided in me that she felt uncomfortable at networking events. “I worked with AI to create 10 things I can say, but when I get in the room, I always freeze and can’t remember what to say,” she told me. “Do you have any tips for remembering my scripts when I’m anxious?” She seemed disappointed when I told her that her time would be better spent practicing talking to people at networking events, not memorizing scripts.

There’s a good chance you’re better at knowing what to say to your friend or how to ask for help from a colleague than AI is. You’ve been doing it your whole life, and your willingness to keep doing it every single day is what will keep your social skills from atrophying.

2) Difficult conversations

One of my clients started a business with a friend. Several months in, he felt his friend was taking advantage of their relationship by not putting in as much effort. He asked AI for help, but when he confronted the issue as the chatbot suggested, his friend became defensive, and their conversation turned ugly fast. They both came to regret the things they said, but the damage was done.

What the chatbot told him to do made sense to him in the moment, but in hindsight, the script sounded overly formal and far too direct. He couldn’t believe he listened to the AI. He would never have been so accusatory when striking up a conversation if he’d trusted himself.

Conversations where you’re setting a boundary, asking an awkward question, being assertive, or showing vulnerability can create a lot of discomfort if you’re not used to having them. It’s tempting to turn to AI to develop a strategy or pen the perfect monologue, but difficult conversations are more an art than a science.

There’s no single right way to tell your partner you’re feeling insecure or to tell your mother-in-law you’d appreciate a call before she shows up. AI doesn’t know your emotions, your personalities, your history with the other person, or the circumstances you’re both in — no matter how much you think you’ve explained.

You don’t need to appear flawless during a difficult conversation. In fact, your willingness to be imperfect might be what helps you create better conversations.

3) Reading other people

I worked with another client who thought AI would help her choose better romantic partners. She said, “I put a whole week’s worth of text conversations into AI and asked it to tell me if there were any signs my partner had attachment issues, and it said he may be avoidant.”

She was prepared to end the relationship, but the next day she put in their latest conversation, and the AI said her love interest was more likely to be securely attached. She was surprised to see the chatbot offering her two contradictory answers.

I’m seeing other people ask AI to interpret whether a friend is mad at them based on their recollection of an exchange or whether they annoyed a colleague based on an email thread. But by design, chatbots answer questions with complete confidence. Hearing a definitive tone eliminates the uncertainty, which feels good. However, it also reduces the doubt that might lead us to seek the information we may be lacking — such as by asking the person directly.

Interpreting other people’s emotional state or seeing things from their perspective is at the core of emotional intelligence. Outsourcing those things to AI might make you feel like you’ve got the competitive edge, but AI doesn’t understand feelings. It can only estimate the best response based on its training data.

What all three have in common

When we use AI to help us with social situations, we’re usually tackling the problem from the wrong angle: We’re trying to reduce our distress in the moment. When AI validates that we’re right and tells us what to do, we reduce our anxiety and uncertainty because confirmation and a reassuring tone feel good.

I have fallen prey to this too. For a short stint, I started running emails through Claude to check the tone when I didn’t want to sound too eager or harsh. A year earlier, I would have sent these messages without a second thought. At some point, it occurred to me that I’m a therapist and an author who has been writing my own emails for decades. I didn’t need AI to give me the right words or critique my sentences. But I found solace when AI gave me a stamp of approval that my emails would land well.

But that quick-hit of good feelings comes at the expense of building faith in our own abilities and sharpening our social skills. For instance, sitting with uncertainty might inspire you to issue an apology after you’ve become a little too harsh with a friend, one that might repair the relationship. It’s an opportunity you might miss if you simply turn to AI for reassurance that your irritation was justified. Sometimes you need those uncertain feelings to help you think differently about how to solve a problem or how to do things differently next time.

And the thing about AI is that it offers unlimited reassurance. In the past, you may ask a friend if a mistake was as bad as you imagined. Fair enough, but ask that same friend that same question four times, and she might question if you’re OK or point out that you don’t like her answer. It would likely discourage you from asking again, requiring you to sit with your uncertainty.

AI, however, will let you ask over and over without any sense of irritation, and if you don’t like the answer, you can word the question differently. Eventually you’ll arrive at the answer you want to hear. You can also ask anytime, day or night, so you don’t have to sit with uncertainty for long. It becomes an easy way to avoid discomfort, and the more relief it offers, the more likely we are to reach for it again.

Confidence is built on evidence

The best way to build social skills — and your confidence in them — is with real-time practice. Every time you struggle through an awkward conversation, you hone your skills and learn about yourself. And every time you try to read your friend’s emotional state without asking AI for backup, you build confidence in your emotional intelligence. Even when you make a mistake, you get an opportunity to learn from your mistake and try again.

Every time you hand one of those moments to AI, you lose an opportunity to see if you could have handled the situation. You learn to trust yourself less, and you reach for AI more. It’s a vicious cycle that can be hard to break.

Worse, the AI-polished version of you might not even be worth it. Researchers at Cornell and Stanford ran experiments with algorithmic “smart replies” built into messaging apps. The conversations that used these algorithmic replies moved faster and partners rated each other as closer. However, when someone suspected the other person was using them, they judged that person more harshly.

It’s important to be aware of what we’re handing over to AI and to recognize how we’re using it to regulate our emotional discomfort and navigate social situations. Being socially adept means learning to let yourself sit with uncertainty, make a few social blunders, and question yourself. This is what will help you sharpen your social skills over the long term — and the confidence that you didn’t need AI’s help in the first place.

This article 3 social skills you should never outsource to AI is featured on Big Think .