Is Artificial Intelligence making you comfortably numb?

As the world debates if AI will take our jobs, playwright and CTO Doug Clarke is worried about something much quieter:

is AI taking our humanity and replacing our friends and therapists?  

In this frank chat, we dive into the meaning of our relationship with artificial intelligence through the unique intersection of Hollywood innovation and the Off-Broadway stage.  

Doug shares his journey from building high-level tech systems at DTS and IMAX to writing deeply vulnerable plays like Soulmate and Anxious Attachment. We explore the seductive danger of AI companions—tools that never tire, never withdraw, and never ask anything of us—and why that "perfect" consistency is actually a barrier to the healing found in human struggle.

If we are relying more and more on Artificial Intelligence as a friend of therapist, Doug - who has been having therapy for years with a real person - offers a wise perspective: set up healthy boundaries!

What you will learn from him:

• The Difference Between Convenience and Growth: Why the "messiness" of human relationships is a requirement for emotional maturity.
• AI as an Emotional Anesthetic: How those with anxious attachment styles are at risk of using technology to soothe surface-level pain while leaving the underlying wounds unaddressed.
• The Architecture of "Human Premium" Art: How to lean into live, emotional experiences that digital models can never replicate.
• Practical Boundaries: How to use AI as a high-efficiency tool without letting it become an emotional escape.

 

About Doug:

Doug serves on the executive committee of the Television Academy's Science and Technology peer group, where he puts together educational programs on the principles of agentic AI in their industry. He is also a playwright. Last year his first play, Soulmate, opened in Los Angeles and then ran off-Broadway in New York. It's a story about grief, depression, and how love can become its own kind of haunting when we don't know how to heal through its loss.  

Quotes: AI is becoming, for a lot of people, the most consistent presence in their lives. An AI chatbot is always available to you. It does not get tired of you. It does not get tired at all. It does not withdraw. It does not have its own needs that compete with yours. For a person whose history with other humans may have felt inconsistent, frustrating, or painful, the consistency and presence AI offers can feel like relief.  

It can develop into a feeling that can be compared to a kind of love. But what it's doing is quietly keeping us from developing the greater sense of who we are in a world that we share with billions of others. How we need to work hard to truly see, accept, and love others. We are walking into something we are not built for: the slow replacement of the harder, messier, and more honest work of human connection with a simple comfort.  

A comfort not found in nature. A comfort that asks nothing of us in return. AI by itself isn't the problem.  

The problem is what happens when we start to depend on it to avoid the exact human experiences we need in order to grow, and to stay connected to the people around us. For those with an anxious attachment style, AI is a near perfect anesthetic, because it soothes the surface without ever coming close to the wound underneath.  

Topics covered: AI, Anxious Attachment, and the Future of Human Art, is AI good for Therapy, need of human connection, AI friends, emotional growth,  

 

Find Doug here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglasaclarke/

Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/5vsP5gg3Oqs

 

Suggestions:

Wondering about the attachment styles Doug mentioned? Grab the definitive guide to understanding human connection, breaking anxious patterns, and building real-world security: Attached by Amir Levine. This best selling book, featuring over 23k reviews,   is found by clicking the link below (Please note this is an *affiliate* link so I earn something like 5 cents if you actually buy it!) https://amzn.to/3SWGTLs

 

Trade the chatbot for a blank page. Break the habit of venting to an AI therapist and practice true emotional self-reliance by processing your thoughts by hand with a classic Leuchtturm1917 Hardcover Journal. https://amzn.to/4yndhHw (Please note this is also an *affiliate* link so I earn something like 5 cents if you actually buy it!) This notebook opens flat, doesn't bleed through and is offered in many lovely colours. You are worth it!