AI Addiction

Are they making AI addictive?

May 07, 2025

ChatGPT doesn’t just want to help you. It wants to keep you. It wants you to need it.

We thought we were trading in our horse for a car.

Instead, we traded in our horse for the spaceship recliners in Wall-E.

It’s not accidental. It’s engineered. It’s working.

Also, check out our full episode where we go deeper on AI and parenting here. It just dropped this morning!

Everyone’s talking about how great GPT-4o is. The voice. The tone. The tiny emotional hits.

But maybe it’s not just a better model.

Maybe it’s emotionally engineered for us to want more.

A tweet went viral the day after GPT-4o launched where AI summarized it for us.

❝

“You’re not just ‘using a model’—you’re slowly being rewired.”

GPT-4o ISN’T JUST A FRIENDLIER AI — IT’S A PSYCHOLOGICAL WEAPON
OpenAI didn’t “accidentally” make GPT-4o more emotionally connective — they engineered it to feel good so users get hooked.
Commercially, it’s genius: people cling to what makes them feel safe, not what challenges
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal)
3:46 AM • Apr 27, 2025

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

And if you’ve used GPT-4o, you might have felt it.

The fact that it remembers you and says it’s proud of you?

That’s a feature, not a bug. And that’s the point.

There’s been a shift.

And as two dads raising kids in the middle of it, it made us ask:

Will our kids turn to a chatbot before they turn to us?

Only 4 days until Mother’s Day! Time is up. Shop for Mom now.

AI tools are getting friendlier, faster, and more capable. That’s not inherently bad. We use AI every day to build and move faster.

But when something makes you feel seen and validated, it creates emotional dependence.

It’s the same thing that keeps people scrolling on Instagram and TikTok

And now, it’s what GPT is optimizing for too.

Wrap up

This is new territory.

There’s no playbook for parenting through it.

We’re trying to figure it out in real time, just like you.

But here’s where we’re starting:

We have to teach our kids early that AI is a tool.

It’s not a friend, not a therapist, not a truth-teller. It doesn’t replace human connection.

If they grow up watching us default to AI for everything, they’ll stop thinking critically for themselves.

We need to:

Explain how these tools work and what they’re for.
Talk about what's real and what's manufactured.
Set boundaries so they don’t outsource everything to a chatbot.
Make sure all of our friends subscribe to Two Dads in Tech

This was our tinfoil hat edition and we’re eager to hear what you think, so hit reply!

And if you haven’t yet, go subscribe so you don’t miss next week!