Search Website
Pseudointimacy and AI
Project Title: AI, Pseudointimacy, and Why Intimacy Matters: Towards Better Design
Generative AI chatbots that act as a “companion” are increasingly promoted as tools to address the rising epidemic of loneliness. Though it may seem obvious to many of us that relational AI chatbots are an insufficient solution to loneliness, it’s not obvious our intuitions are correct. Nor is it obvious, if they are correct, why AI is insufficient.
This project critically examines the use of relational AI by examining why connecting with other humans is valuable. Drawing on Gunkel’s work on intimacy, as well as the literatures on love and friendship, this project develops the concept of pseudointimacy to explain how human-AI relationships can simulate intimacy and to provide a conceptual tool to help enable ethical evaluation as these technologies evolve. Drawing on this concept, the team examines how relational AI could be better designed and regulated.
Principal Investigator:
- Jasmine Gunkel, Department of Philosophy, Western University
Collaborators:
- Carolyn McLeod, Department of Philosophy, Western University
- Anabel Quan-Haase, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, Western University
- Andrew Richmond, Postdoctoral fellow, Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Western University
- Atrisha Sarkar, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University
- Maxwell Smith, School of Health Studies, Western University