Latest / Empathy Unbound: AI, Philosophy, and Human Connection
Is Your AI Companion More Like Taylor Swift Than a Friend? Philosopher Alexis Elder Explains
Philosopher Alexis Elder, Associate Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota Duluth and author of "Friendship, Robots, Social Media: False Friends as Second Selves," joins Andrew Phipps to ask whether we can genuinely be friends with an AI. Drawing on Aristotle's warnings about false friends and Confucian ideas about ritual, Alexis argues that social media can support real friendship in a way robots and AI, lacking reciprocity, cannot. The conversation ranges across parasocial relationships with celebrities, the commercial incentives behind "friendly" AI…
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