This sentence effectively reads "AI cam be just as good as (nothing)" since you can't talk to a friend when you don't have one.

Of course, I understand the point you were trying to make, which is that AI is better than absolutely nothing; but I disagree in the vain that AI will give you a false since of companionship that might lead you further towards bad outcomes.

This is not true, and it's not even wrong. You almost cannot argue with such a statement without being ridiculous. The best I can say is: natural language synthesis is not a substitute for friends.

If we are debating these things, it's evidence we adopted LLMs with far too little forethought.

I mean, on a technicality, you could say "my friend synthesizes plausible language, this can do it, too. So it can substitute a little bit!" but at that point I'm pretty sure we're not discussing friendship in its essence, and the (emotional, physical, social, etc) support that comes with it.