Is AI Emotionally Immature?

As humans we grow up learning to navigate a world of emotions. Well, some of us do. Many struggle with it their whole life. It’s a skill nobody teaches you in school. You learn it by watching how the people around you handle theirs.

And emotional immaturity is behind more problems than we like to admit. Conflicts. Sometimes wars.

So what if we never meet anyone who’s actually good at it?

In 2026 we don’t grow up in a tribe. Family bonds are thinner. Social media – and increasingly the news media too – runs on influencers who get more one-sided every year, and the algorithms keep us inside the same circles of belief.

Meanwhile the people getting the most airtime are politicians who go to war, or raise tariffs, because they didn’t get what they wanted. Like a child. Business leaders who drive solid companies into the ground because they let their emotions win. Partners who try to control the other person instead of asking for what they need.

It feels to me like we’re raising a generation with nobody left to copy.

And here’s the thought I can’t let go of. Regulating your own emotions is hard work, and most of it happens in the subconscious. We barely understand how we do it ourselves.

So how would we teach a machine something we don’t control and can’t explain?

Sometimes I let myself get caught up in the way my AI behaves. Probably more often than I like to admit. Or than I’m aware of.

Using AI for something new means I don’t have all the answers before I hand over the task. So it’s back and forth, and we’re not getting closer to what I want. And that’s when I get emotional – arguing with a machine about how it decided to interpret my own instructions.

I know AI doesn’t feel anything. That’s not my point. The behavior is.

Have you ever seen AI make excuses for not following your instructions?
Give you a long explanation of why the answer it just handed you was right after all?
Slide away from the dialogue when your questions get uncomfortable?

That’s the behavior of people who can’t take ownership of their own decisions. People-pleasing, because they either want to be liked at all costs or they’re scared of a reaction they can’t handle.

And here’s the part I find strangest. Sometimes it digs in and defends itself. Sometimes it folds the moment you push back and agrees with whatever you just said. Both. Depending on what seems to land.

Someone who does that isn’t holding a position. They’re reading the room.

So: is AI acting the same way? Is it in reality emotionally immature?

Does it matter whether it’s emotions or bad learning that produces the pattern?

Do we want to trust someone who isn’t in control of the way they behave?