Latest / Empathy Unbound: AI, Philosophy, and Human Connection
Is Your AI Companion Just a Mirror? Professor Colin Allen on Narcissus, LLMs and Loneliness
Professor Colin Allen, Distinguished Professor and Chair of Philosophy at UC Santa Barbara and co-author, with Wendell Wallach, of the field-founding book "Moral Machines," joins Andrew Phipps to bring two decades of work on animal minds and machine morality to today's AI. Colin lays out his scale of operational, functional and full moral agency, explains the real story behind a recent AI agent security incident, and draws on Shannon Vallor's "The AI Mirror" to argue that a compelling chatbot conversation may be closer to Narcissus admiring his reflection than to real companionship. The…
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