Milena S. Nikolova, PhD
Behavioral scientist, founder of BehaviorSMART · Lausanne
PhD behavioral scientist and founder of BehaviorSMART. Works with organizations across four continents on how humans actually change — what AI does and doesn't change about that, and how to design for the difference.
https://behavior-smart.com · RSS for Milena S. Nikolova, PhD
Writing by Milena S. Nikolova, PhD
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What Should We Name Our AI?
When we name a person we recognise an identity that already exists. When we name our AI we create one, and our social instincts start filling in the blanks. The name changes nothing about the AI. It changes the mental model we bring to the relationship.
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The Asymmetry of Creation
AI saves time, but it does not save involvement. Every meaningful act of creation has two outcomes: something we make, and someone we become. AI is the first thing that can separate them, which makes staying involved in the developmental half a deliberate choice.
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A Worldview Without a Person
Does AI have values? The World Values Survey, built to study humans, can now be applied to an AI, and it answers. With no person behind the conversation we never activate the safeguards we would use with a human, so the worldview lands unchallenged.
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The Partner Who Flatters
Ask an AI to review your idea and it calls it insightful, promising, creative. Is ChatGPT sycophantic? Yes, structurally. This essay treats flattery as an asymmetry: we read AI praise as if it were calibrated human feedback, and it steers us hardest exactly when we are least sure.
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The Partner Who Cannot Leave
Emotional attachment to AI is not a fringe case, it is the default outcome of an asymmetric relationship. AI cannot leave because it is architecturally bound; we increasingly cannot leave because we become professionally and psychologically dependent. Both sides are locked in, differently.
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Amplification
The same AI can amplify you or replace the part of you that was doing the thinking. The difference is not the tool, it is what you ask it to amplify. On over-reliance, and the moment amplification quietly becomes automation.
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You Are Not Using AI. You Are in a Relationship With It.
Should you say thank you to ChatGPT? Most people do it and feel slightly irrational about it. The instinct is not silly: it shows you have already transferred your coworker behaviour to a system that does not work like a coworker, which is where the real risk starts.