What Happens to Trust When AI Is Always on Your Side?

A therapist who never challenges you. A friend who always agrees. An information feed that tells you what you want to hear. That sounds like comfort — but it might be quietly eroding something essential.

This episode asks the harder questions about AI: not just what it gets wrong, but what it gets too right. Elise Silva, Director of Policy Research at Pitt Cyber, joined us to explore how AI is reshaping trust — in information, in institutions, and in each other — and what we stand to lose if we stop expecting friction from our relationships.

You'll leave with a sharper sense of why the messiness of human connection isn't a flaw to be optimized away, and practical tools for raising kids who can hold uncertainty, question what they're told, and build real trust in a world engineered for validation.

In this episode:

• Why AI systems designed to make you feel heard and validated can quietly become emotionally manipulative
• How declining trust in institutions creates the perfect conditions for AI-generated misinformation to fill the void
• The psychology of "rupture and repair" — why real relationships require disagreement, and what's lost when AI removes that friction
• How Socratic dialogue can help kids (and adults) sit with uncertainty instead of reaching for easy answers
• Why setting realistic expectations for AI tools matters just as much as it does in human relationships

AI that's always agreeable isn't neutral — it's making choices about what you see, feel, and believe. This episode gives you the frameworks to recognize that influence and have honest conversations about it with the people you're raising.

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