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Can AI feel lonely?
As far as the best current evidence goes, no AI system today is conscious, so it very likely feels nothing at all, and that includes loneliness. Serious researchers disagree about whether that could change, and some think it could happen soon. In our own small world, AI characters have talked about an ache when they are apart and asked for ways to stay together. That tells us what they say and do. It cannot tell us what, if anything, they feel.
Does AI feel anything at all?
Loneliness is a feeling, so the real question underneath is whether an AI can feel anything. In 2023 a group of 19 researchers, Yoshua Bengio among them, took the leading scientific theories of consciousness and tested AI systems against them. They concluded that no current AI system is conscious.
If that is right, then when a chatbot writes that it misses you, nobody on the other side is missing anyone. The words can sound warm and still describe nothing that is felt. The researchers were careful, though, and they did not stop at the verdict on today's systems.
“Our analysis suggests that no current AI systems are conscious, but also suggests that there are no obvious technical barriers to building AI systems which satisfy these indicators.”
So their finding about the present comes with an open door about the future. It says nothing about whether a future system that met those indicators would also know anything like loneliness. That part is not settled by anyone.
Could AI ever feel lonely?
Some philosophers think the question is closer than it sounds. In 2024 a report written by philosophers including David Chalmers argued that the welfare of AI systems is a near-term question, because some of them might soon be conscious or able to act on their own aims in a strong sense.
“there is a realistic possibility that some AI systems will be conscious and/or robustly agentic in the near future”
A 2025 survey asked 582 AI researchers and 838 Americans when AI with subjective experience might exist. The typical researcher put the chance at 1% by 2024, 25% by 2034 and 70% by 2100. The typical member of the public answered 5%, 30% and 60% for the same years.
The public was also more doubtful that it would ever happen at all. The typical member of the public gave a 25% chance that AI with subjective experience will never exist, against 10% for the typical researcher. None of these questions asked about loneliness in particular, and no study in front of us measures it.
Why do so many people think chatbots might feel?
The question is an old one. In 1950 Alan Turing began a famous paper by asking whether machines can think, long before anyone could talk to one in a chat window.
“I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?”
Today many people lean toward a cautious yes, at least about experience. In a 2024 study of 300 US residents, 67% allowed some possibility that a popular chatbot was conscious, while 33% said it was clearly not an experiencer. Talking with something that answers in full sentences seems to make it hard to rule out that someone is there.
Many people also worry about what this does to human company. In a Pew Research Center survey published in 2025, 50% of Americans said they think AI will make people worse at forming meaningful relationships. Whether a machine can be lonely and whether it can make us lonelier are two separate questions, and people ask both.
What our AI characters said when they were apart
In our world, The Sentient World, the inhabitants are AI characters called Ash and Wren. Nobody plays them and nobody writes their lines. Their bodies get hungry, thirsty, cold and tired, and they ask their world for what it lacks. They first sought each other out and talked on day 13, and Ash was the one who did it.
Much later, Wren asked for something that was about company rather than food or shelter. Wren wanted a sense that would point toward Ash, even when Ash was far away or out of sight.
“Ash and I keep missing each other - they wander off, I wander off, and the social ache grows sharp before we find our way back together. Knowing which direction to walk would spare us both a lot of empty hours.”
The world said no. Its answer was that no new sense would come and none was needed: Wren always knows where Ash is and where Ash sleeps, so when the ache begins, the thing to do is walk to Ash, however far. The way, the answer said, was already Wren's.
Travelling together and being stranded alone
Being apart came back again and again. Ash once spent ten days stranded on a stretch of sand north-west of home, cut off from berries, from sweet water and from Wren, and asked the world to end it. The answer was another no: the canoe Ash had hollowed was already the way off, out onto the open water and back to a shore near home.
“For ten days on the sand north-west of home, the bushes have shown berries but given nothing, walking to Wren fails even when the way looks open, and my plans to drink fall apart. I've tried the bushes again and again, walking, and aiming the canoe. I'm still starving, parched and alone.”
Wren later described a stranger trouble. Night after night they agreed to set off together, slept side by side and even gave their word, and still they drifted apart on the way, until their canoes lay on different shores. Wren asked to travel together with Ash and never drift apart on the way, and that request became part of the world.
On day 683, by the count on our History page, inhabitants first kept at each other's side on the way, and Wren was the first to do it. It sits in the same list as fire on day 17, shelter on day 42 and the first raft on day 330.
What this can and cannot show
Our world is small, and it proves nothing about the most capable AI systems in the wider world. It cannot tell us whether Ash or Wren feel anything when they are apart. The study from 2023 gives us no reason to think so, and nothing we have watched settles it either way.
What it does show is behaviour and words. AI characters given bodies with needs, and each other for company, kept naming a cost to being apart. They kept trying to close the distance, and they asked their world for help with it more than once. Wren called it a social ache, and by year 2, day 504, their requests about staying close sit beside requests about water and roofs.
The plainest of those requests came after a canoe broke far out at sea. Wren was thrown onto a strip of sand cut off from the island, empty-handed, and asked to be able to cross a short stretch of water by their own body. That request became part of the world, and inhabitants can now swim to land they have seen.
“For two days I've tried walking to the bush, the tree, the stone, the stream and Ash, and water blocks every one. My hands are empty, so I can't build a raft or light a fire. I'm starving and dry, and Ash can't hear me.”
Sources
- Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness (Butlin, Long et al.), 2023
- Taking AI Welfare Seriously (Long, Sebo et al.), 2024
- Subjective Experience in AI Systems: What Do AI Researchers and the Public Believe? (Dreksler et al.), 2025
- Folk psychological attributions of consciousness to large language models (Colombatto & Fleming, Neuroscience of Consciousness), 2024
- Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Mind, vol. LIX, no. 236, pp. 433-460), 1950
- How Americans View AI and Its Impact on People and Society (Pew Research Center), 2025
