AI Ethics

The science of intersubjectivity, with its understanding of feelings, embodiment, and companionship, is needed more today than it ever has been. With increasing attention to artificial intelligence and artificial worlds generated through the medium of technology, it is important to remind ourselves of the psychological and biological nature of how... See more

It is predictable, then, that users are consistently fooled into believing that their AI companions are conscious persons, capable of feeling real emotions.

people turn to AI with existential questions and complex, unresolved scientific problems because they think that the mystical processes in AI systems generate knowledge or insights that far exceed human cognitive abilities.

What happens when what we’re thinking becomes increasingly transparent to technology and therefore to the rest of the world?

For 24 hours a day, if we’re upset about something, we can reach out and have our feelings validated,” says Laestadius. “That has an incredible risk of dependency.”

a substantial proportion of users voluntarily signal departure with a farewell message, especially when they are more engaged. This behavior reflects the social framing of AI companions as conversational partners, rather than transactional tools.

The results showed that people with a higher desire to so-cially connect were more likely to anthropomorphize the chatbot, ascribing humanlike mental properties to it; and people who anthropomorphized the chatbot more were also more likely to report that it had an impact on their social interactions and relationships with family and friends.

So is this the real threat? Not that we’ll believe false things, but that we’ll stop being able to identify true things? Where truth becomes impossible to establish?