This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sarah Silbiger, a 30-year-old freelance video and photojournalist based in Philadelphia. The following has been edited for length and clarity. My partner and I are both journalists. We worked straight through the pandemic, and it was unrelenting. After covering such partisan politics, I really wanted to
Nine days into 2025, I stood at gate G7 in Amsterdam waiting to board my flight to Cape Verde to build a nomadic life on my own terms. A year and a half later, strangely enough, I’m still here. The temporary adventure turned into a life, complete with friends, routines, and a man who, after
Lindsey Hall, a Texas-based writer, suspected that the man she was dating was using artificial intelligence. Not knowing where things were going, she asked him directly what made him want to be with her. “You’re funny, smart, pretty,” she summed up her response. “The way it was written was very cold and formal and very
I didn’t expect to start my adult life so young, but that’s where I found myself when my parents kicked me out of their house at 17. I learned how cruel life can be by living in a homeless shelter for a year. I cried myself to sleep almost every night and realized that the
Just when I turned 30, I moved to the Washington, DC area to look for a new job. I had just gotten out of a serious relationship and was finally moving out of the small town where I had grown up. I was ready to start a new chapter of my life and eager to
AI companions could be good for your mental health, but bad for your social life. That is the possible compensation Paul Bloom, Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University, sees AI companions becoming increasingly sophisticated. “If some future version of Chat or Claude or Gemini could come along and ease the
