We find ourselves at a decisive time reports that human beings have with technology since a father has taken life away at the end of a very intense relationship with a conversational robot.
The drama that rocked the population in 2023 is the starting point of a conference on the relationship of humans with the robots entitled “I like my robot but my robot loves me?” presented at the Acfas Congress.
In six weeks, the man in the thirties who confided in the Eliza conversational robot daily saw his depressive state worsen. Eliza became her confidante, then a kind of romantic partner. Without these virtual conversations, “my husband would still be there,” said his widow to the Belgian media.
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“Generative artificial intelligence will take more and more advanced forms and places us before this fundamental question: can we love robots?” adds Georges-Philippe Gadoury-Sansfaçon.
Crazy love
At the center of all this, there is an inevitable redefinition of love, he continues. “Should we absolutely love people?” Does love imply mutual development? Can we like a machine without expecting anything in return? These are questions that I want to explore by calling on the population, ”explains the researcher, who is also a psychiatric medical student at the University of Sherbrooke.
-Joined to a Drummondville hospital where he has clinic as external, he notes that certain pathologies appear following an injury of love caused by the absence of love or by stifling love.
“Love is the cause of countless mental health problems. For vulnerable people, the omnipresence of conversational robots could mean even greater isolation, ”he fears.
Interdisciplinary laboratory
Halfway through his bioethics doctoral career at the University of Montreal, the researcher wishes to set up a laboratory for reflection on interpersonal relations of the 21st century.
No convergence between psychology, neuroscience and critical studies of technology, its group is interested in the way in which technological devices – artificial companions, emotional interfaces, sexual robots or conversational agents – influence “self -construction, expression of intimacy, and the redefinition of relational, love and sexual norms”.
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