Building a world where technology strengthens our capacity to love and connect.

We envision a future where the science of relational learning, how we learn to love, care, and connect throughout development, helps us strengthen human relationships, develop better technologies, and advance AI. We call this Augmented Love, a future where technology supports healthy relational development, strengthens human connection, and improves mental health and well-being, particularly for young people.

1. 01Strengthen Human Connection: Advance the science of relational learning to strengthen human relationships and improve mental health and well-being.
2. 02Advance AI Through Relationship Science: Use what we know about how humans learn to love and care to build AI that is more capable and less harmful to humans.
3. 03Develop Technology That Strengthens Human Relationships: Bring developmental science and AI together to create and test technologies that support relational learning and strengthen human connection.

For thousands of years, young people have learned how to love and care through other people. We first learn trust from parents and caregivers. We discover belonging through our friends. Teachers, coaches, and mentors help us see who we might become. We learn vulnerability through first crushes, resilience through heartbreak, compassion through forgiveness, and communication through conflict.

Adolescence is a once-in-a-lifetime period of rapid relational learning. Young people become intensely motivated to form close friendships, fall in love, and discover who they are. They are learning how to navigate love and conflict, communicate their needs, be vulnerable, build trust, and care for another person.

Relationships are the invisible foundation of human flourishing. They strengthen mental health, give us a sense of belonging and purpose, support success in school and work, and build the trust that holds families and communities together. Adolescence is a sensitive period for building that foundation, creating a powerful window for relational learning before relationship patterns become more established and harder to change later in life.

For the first time in human history, machines are part of that landscape. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. teens now use artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots (Faverio & Sidoti, 2025). Among high school students, 42% report that they or a friend have turned to AI as a friend or companion (Center for Democracy & Technology, 2025).

AI has extraordinary potential. If designed well, it can put evidence-based guidance in the hands of millions who would otherwise go without. The same qualities that make AI helpful can also change how young people learn to love and care.

Healthy relationships are built through uncertainty and vulnerability. Few people work harder at understanding another person than a teenager falling in love. That motivation creates a powerful opportunity for relational learning, as young people discover what it means to love someone with needs and perspectives different from their own.

If AI begins replacing those experiences rather than supporting them, we risk altering one of the oldest developmental processes in human history (Ha et al., 2026).

Yet we do not have a shared, evidence-based understanding of how these technologies influence relational development. We are making decisions now that may change how a generation learns to build relationships, even though our capacity for human connection is part of what holds society together.