Do you consider AI good enough to substitute human interaction?

I don't think it's a matter of capability. Even as a neurodivergent introvert, I recognize in human connection one of the most fundamental aspects of our life on this earth. You may get answers that a person also would've given you, but think of all the people you won't get to know, groups you'll never be a part of.

it surprised me how complete and articulate answers are.

That's their greatest trap. They always need to sound confident to have the best chance of providing a good answer, so that when they don't know or you get an unlucky seed they just lie/pretend very convincingly. Never rely on LLM output as the sole source, even, especially, when it sounds plausible.

It is very important to remember that even if they "talk" like people, they are not people. Using them as a search engine on steroids is alright, but if you ever find yourself asking "what do you think about..." you're using them wrong. Never treat them as a friend, ask for advice, talk about your emotions, etc. This is easier said than done as a language-machine activates out brain in all kinds of funny ways; forgetting you're talking with an algorithm is very very easy.

Also, don't listen to people who say you'll be "left behind" if you don't jump on the train. That train is not headed to a nice place.

All that said, they are sometimes marginally useful. I would say that cloud AI usage is never ok and self-hosted models can be acceptable, depending on their usage. Look into Ollama and Unsloth. You don't need that much RAM/VRAM to get something workable, what are your hardware specs? I can suggest some models