Abstract
A range of modern technologies allow users to engage with artificial systems in ways that mimic human interaction — from digital assistants like Siri and Alexa, to virtual customer-service agents, online wellness coaches and CBT specialists, language tutors, chatbots for grieving, and social robots for therapy and healthcare. Many of these encounters are affectively charged. How should we understand this propensity to enter into emotion-involving relationships with artificial systems we know aren’t real?
Drawing on recent work with Tom Roberts (Exeter), I defend a fictionalist answer to this question. When we interact with social robots, chatbots, and other artificial agents, we enter into an elaborate game of make-believe, wherein we treat the artificial system as if it were an entity with thoughts and interests of its own. This fictionalist model explains our emotional engagements without dismissing them as irrational or suggesting that we must treat artificial agents as moral subjects. I specifically attend to an under-explored dimension of these human-AI interactions — their temporal character — and how this temporal character is significant for the depth and degree of emotional investment likely to arise within a given human-AI relationship. I consider several case studies, including the acclaimed electronic musician Holly Herndon’s collaborations with her AI partner, SPAWN, before concluding by discussing this view’s significance for design and ethics.
Bio
Joel Krueger is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Exeter. He works in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of cognitive science: specifically, issues in 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, extended) cognition, including emotions, social cognition, loneliness, and psychopathology. Sometimes he also writes about comparative philosophy and philosophy of music. He is an Associate Editor of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences and Passion: Journal of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions (EPSSE).