David Lay Williams

The Psychological Impact of Digital Isolation: How AI-Driven Social Interactions Shape Human Behavior and Mental Well-Being Felix Eling 3697-3705 Apr 30, 2025 Education The Psychological Impact of Digital Isolation: How AI-Driven Social Interactions Shape Human Behavior and Mental Well-Being Felix Eling Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Pharmacy, Gulu College of Health Sciences, Gulu City, Northern Uganda DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.90400265 Received: 13 March 2025; Revised: 22 March 2025; Accepted: 25 March 2025; Published: 30 April 2025 ABSTRACT The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in social interactions has transformed how humans experience companionship, communication, and mental well-being. This review examines the psychological impact of AI-driven social interactions, focusing on virtual assistants, AI chatbots, and digital companions. It explores the benefits, risks, and ethical concerns associated with AI companionship. A systematic review methodology was employed, detailing inclusion criteria, databases searched, and analysis techniques. Findings suggest that while AI can offer emotional relief and support, over-reliance may disrupt real-world social bonding. Ethical concerns such as data privacy, emotional manipulation, and regulatory gaps are highlighted. The study underscores the need for balanced AI integration in human socialization. The study also addresses gaps in previous literature by examining AI’s influence on different demographic groups and cultural contexts.

Let me tell you a story. Perhaps you can guess where this is going... though it does have a bit of a twist.

I was poking around Google Scholar for publications about the relationship between chatbots and wellness. Oh how useful: a systematic literature review! Let's dig into the findings. 🧵

Has the Evanston parks department been seized by Kristi Noem???

Nobel Committee should declare the winner of the World Cup.

You always had my support, Randal.

Hah, fair enough!

5) So while we don't teach envy, we do teach sharing to children. We do not teach hoarding and selfishness. Maybe that's notable? Anyhow, as I said, I don't have time to elaborate on all my disagreements with this piece. But a couple of observations to chew on.

Recognizing Resentment Cambridge Core - Political Theory - Recognizing Resentment

4) You can argue that envy is lamentable in many contexts. But you can't argue that it's unnatural. As Michelle Schwarze has persuasively argued, many of our so-called lamentable emotions are actually important regulative elements in functioning democracies.

YouTube video by English Vidz Two Monkeys Were Paid Unequally Excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED Talk

3) Did someone *teach* this monkey to envy the monkey getting the grapes???

2) No one teaches their kids to envy. It's not a thing. Envy is a very natural reaction many people have to extremely unequal and unjust distributions . . .

What the Economics of Envy Can't Answer | The Daily Economy Forced redistribution dominates public discourse about wealth inequality, yet much of the debate overlooks how people earn, trade, innovate, and create value.

1) New piece from Donald J. Boudreaux on inequality. Don't have time to respond to this right now. But there he makes some pretty contestable points. . . .

The World Has More Billionaires Than Ever Soaring tech valuations and stock-market gains have boosted the number of billionaires and the wealth they hold.

For those keeping score . . .

I just published a Cambridge Elements that offers a critical overview of recent work in epistocracy, Confucian meritocracy, and democratic theories of meritocracy. Free to download for the next two weeks. URL: t.co/Z5BOYrCRGF.

This is not a sustainable business model for musicians, suffice to say.

When I was in college, gigs usually paid $100-$200, enough to pay my rent and buy groceries. In 2025, gigs still pay the same (unadjusted for inflation). For professionals, the album sales helped. Streams not so much.

David Lay Williams Discovered His True Passion for Political Thought at TCU - TCU Magazine Political science professor David Lay Williams explores economic inequality’s history and moral impact in “The Greatest of All Plagues.”

I'm a bit overwhelmed that my alma mater's alumni magazine has decided to do a feature on me with a focus on my recent @princetonupress.bsky.social book. I'm sure there are at least 50,000 TCU alumni living more interesting lives than I am, but this is nevertheless a real (and unexpected) honor.

I am grading in my university's library today because my office is simply too cold to work in.

I'm not opposed to going full Plato on these matters (abolition of property for rulers), but would settle for blind trusts for all of them.

He also serves on my alma mater's board of trustees. Not who I would have picked, but obviously no one consults me.

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.

One of the best pieces you'll read on AI's existential threat to education. Highlight here is its emphasis on the complicity of university administrators in this fiasco. Any respectable president or chancellor would have called for Congressional hearings for this being unleashed with no forethought.

. . . as I listen to Miff Mole.

Completely confident this algorithm would place me comfortably in my 100s.

Agreed on Smith's relevance -- we should all be reading and contemplating this book. Of course, however, I think Rousseau might be just a little better on precisely the same dimensions.

Love that you are related to Irving Berlin! My jazz group (@chicagojazzdads.com) recently resurrected another very fitting piece of his, "Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor." bsky.app/profile/layw...

Total buyouts for 15 fired coaches in 2025: $228 million. That's a record by nearly $100M. Kelly $54M Stoops $38M Smith $33.5M Napier $21M Freeze $15.8M Gundy $15M Wilcox $10.9M Pittman $9.8M Franklin $9M Pry $6M Foster $5M Bray $4M Dilfer $2.4M Beck $1.7M Norvell $1.5M

This year, universities are giving $228 million to football coaches who failed at coaching football so that they won't coach football anymore.

“Oh, Captain, Our Captain”: Competence and National Defense The world has never in human history been a safe place.

The celebrated Hobbes scholar, A.P. Martinich, has created a Substack -- and has insights on the administration's approach to national defense.

Per the flowchart, because Thucydides is not *necessary* for an ancient political theory course, he MUST be removed from the syllabus. Also, there is no single Shakespeare play that MUST be in a Shakespeare seminar. So all the Shakespeare plays must be removed from the Shakespeare syllabus. Right?

Appropriately cynical

Ironic that this is likely coming from the same folks who complain about tuition costs.

This is surely insane on every dimension. But beyond the obvious authoritarianism is the fact that this would require a massive administrative expansion to manage the campus censorship offices.

Of Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the Political by Melissa Lane

Now in #paperback, Melissa Lane's Of Rule and Office is a constitutionalist reading of Plato’s political thought.

Read a free preview: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

#Philosophy #Plato

Join @jgordonwright.com, @jbsinger.bsky.social, me, and the rest of the guys Thursday evening at Evanston Pour for our annual holiday show. Playing all the seasonal favorites!