Several stories recently described a growing class of companions hired by the hour.
They command thousands of dollars—not for sex, but for their ability to discuss artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, politics, science, philosophy, cryptocurrency, longevity, economics, finance, law, and whatever else happens to occupy the minds of people who have made enough money to discover that interesting conversation is surprisingly difficult to come by.
I joked to my friends that I might soon have to leave my career in law and policy. Looking at that list of topics, I couldn't help thinking I'd spent the last two decades accidentally training for the wrong profession.
The joke stayed with me, embarrassingly, though I wasn't seriously considering a career change. I realized I'd spent most of my adult life surrounded by people who performed exactly this service for free.
Trusted minds
Somewhere over the years, I'd acquired a small circle of people who were dangerous to have coffee with. They have the generosity to indulge an idea with me, and the annoying habit of making it not only better but also more complicated (or worse!).
They remember things I'd rather forget, along with the judgments that come with them, and possess an almost supernatural ability to detect when I'm falling in love with my own argument.
I had never thought of this as a service. I simply thought it was called friendship. At one point, I even believed that at least part of that friendship could be replaced by AI.
Conversations with AI are astonishingly useful and fascinating. You can ask it to challenge assumptions, identify weaknesses, remember details, and test lines of thought. It can even simulate emotional support.
But when my conversations with AI end, the discussion evaporates. It remains unresolved.
Human difference
Almost automatically, I reach for my phone to call a particular friend—not because he's smarter than the machine (often he isn't). Not because he'll have better arguments (sometimes he won't even argue). I call because, while AI may help refine my ideas, they don't quite feel real or complete until someone whose opinion I value has wrestled with them too.
Forgive me as I butcher quantum mechanics, but it reminds me (unfairly) of the intuition behind Schrödinger’s cat, that observation changes things. I imagine ideas seem to work that way too.
An idea left alone in one mind is strangely provisional. Once another consciousness has witnessed it, the idea becomes something else. It now exists in two worlds instead of one.
If I spend six months pursuing a terrible idea, my friend suffers through six months of listening to me talk about it. If I stumble onto something worthwhile, he shares the excitement of watching it grow. The conversation belongs to three lives now: his, mine, and ours.
A thought discussed with another person enters the world and is changed. It becomes part of a relationship, and a shared history. Your idea binds you and your friend in the same reality, making the idea harder to abandon, lie about or pretend to be better than it is.
Ideas shared acquire witnesses. You get “karamay”—someone who more or less gainsa stake in it, and suddenly the idea stops being safe.
Which is to say that ideas become vulnerable the moment they are shared. So do the people who share them. Both become exposed to judgment. Another person can misunderstand an idea, dismiss it, carry it for years, or—if you're particularly unlucky—steal it. None of those possibilities exists without another consciousness. That's precisely what makes the conversation matter.
The human premium
AI falls short of that. No matter how sophisticated it becomes, interacting with AI remains consequence-free. AI can process an idea perfectly, but it never has to live with the consequences of that idea.
We spend a great deal of time discussing the jobs AI will replace: programmers, designers, teachers, analysts, doctors, lawyers. Every profession now seems to come with an asterisk.
What receives less attention is what people may eventually start paying for.
If AI continues on its present trajectory of becoming better at things once considered uniquely human, both expertise and “creativity” may become more abundant than they already are now.
What may become genuinely expensive is having another person invest an hour of their finite life thinking with you, being concerned about you, and observing what becomes of your thoughts, not because they are programmed to, but because what becomes of your ideas has somehow become part of their story too.
The real luxury
Witnessing. That’s what those paid companions are really offering. AI, technology, philosophy, and politics just happen to be the subjects that occupy the minds of people who can afford them.
The real luxury isn’t intelligence, not even expertise. It’s finding another consciousness willing to enter the life of your ideas, and in doing so, encounter you, if only for an evening.
People already pay escorts to satisfy deeply human needs, be it intimacy or companionship. For now, many of us are fortunate enough to receive presence free of charge. It may not be such a leap to imagine that it may eventually join that list of things we are charged for.
One day, we may start paying hourly fees to strangers for what many of us once received, abundantly, from friends over coffee.
Nikki Mendez is a corporate lawyer specializing in technology, including cloud computing, cybersecurity, privacy, and intelligent systems, guiding pivotal technology transactions and policy developments.
