For a lot of people, such options are not possible, e.g., elderly, sick, bed-ridden, socially challenged or so on. You underestimate the need and impact of such technology.
If the elderly, sick and bedridden can talk to a computer they can also talk to real people through the computer. For the socially challenged I get where you're coming from, but the question is whether it would help them to develop their social skills or whether they would just become dependent on the chatbot and withdraw even further from the real world.
> If the elderly, sick and bedridden can talk to a computer they can also talk to real people through the computer.
If this is so dependably true, then why does this population still suffer loneliness? How many hours of your day do you devote to zoom chats with lonely old people?
I ultimately support your side of the debate - that digital simulation is not a true medicine - but without being honest about humans and human nature, you create empty arguments.
Some in this thread call pornography useless, call cigarettes useless, call drugs useless. However those products are used endlessly and with great satisfaction by billions of humans throughout thousands of years. It's simply not true - these things are useful to humans, quite obviously.
What causes this puritanical disposition regarding human needs and satisfaction while also literally arguing for humanism vs synthetic encroachment? Without acknowledgement of what humans actually are we won't find a real reason that AI chatbots shouldn't replace them.
You speak as if the "real world" for a bedridden and lonely individual is something that they should just endure and enjoy, but you would never choose to switch places with such a person.