Chatbots as Social‑Care Stopgaps

Chatbots are being proposed and trialed as low‑cost interventions for loneliness and basic mental‑health support. That shift can reduce short‑term demand on stretched services but risks commodifying social contact, displacing human caregivers, and creating regulatory blind spots around safety and accountability. — If chatbots become de facto social‑care substitutes, policymakers must weigh health outcomes, equity (who gets a real person versus a bot), and platform liability.