Abstract: The #1 use case of generative AI in 2025 was for therapy and companionship, with tens of millions monthly users. Many who use AI companions say they seek to avoid shame, judgment, conflict, or simply that they don’t want to be a “burden” on others. The emotional trouble that we might call “relational friction” leads them to pursue AI as a technological exit option. We need to know more about relational friction between human beings to understand what is at stake in these trends. Existing research in education and design argues there is “productive” and “unproductive friction,” depending on whether tensions lead to openness and learning or to people turning away from challenge.
For this talk, I use in-depth interviews and observations of humane interpersonal service workers, completed as part of the research for my most recent book, to propose a new conceptual framework for friction. As part of the preliminary thinking for my next book project, I suggest that we move past the productive/unproductive binary, and account for another iteration: unresolved friction, or the often-ambivalent, sometimes-haunting experience of interacting with another person whom you cannot simply dominate. Furthermore, what people do with relational friction is shaped by their organizational context, which can enable (or require) people to persist through unpleasantness (or not). Relational friction – and how people respond to it – has implications for not just how we think about the impact of AI hegemony but also contemporary politics, education, the arts, and other domains where people must manage interpersonal discomfort with purpose.
Allison Pugh is Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. Her research and teaching focus on how powerful economic trends from job insecurity to automation shape the way people forge meaning, dignity and connection. Her fourth book The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton 2024) is a study of the standardization of work that relies on relationship, and recently won the 2025 best book award from the American Sociological Association (ASA). It has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Science and named to several “best of 2024” lists. The 2024-5 ASA Vice President, Pugh has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Berggruen Institute, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a visiting scholar in Germany, France and Australia.