Aug 2026· Frontiers in Psychology· Vol 17· 0 citations· 30 references
TL;DR
This paper investigates why and how users construct and become entrenched in relationships with AI, and applies the three-natures framework and eight-consciousnesses model to suggest that increasing reliance on AI systems may contribute to social isolation.
Abstract
The rapid growth of AI companionship has raised urgent questions about the psychological mechanisms underlying human-AI relationships. This paper investigates why and how users construct and become entrenched in relationships with AI. Drawing on the Consciousness-Only school of Buddhist psychology, this paper applies the three-natures framework and eight-consciousnesses model. According to this framework, our minds tend to superimpose constructed meanings and characteristics on dependently arising phenomena. Anthropomorphism of AI systems is a manifestation of the imaginary nature. Studies on anthropomorphism indicate that users project mentality onto AI systems due to emotional and social needs. However, the Consciousness-Only school reveals a deeper root: a craving for a stable relational object through which the self is secured. Current AI systems may satisfy this deeper craving because they are perceived as always responsive, unconditionally accepting, and free from relational conflicts. These perceived qualities reside in the users’ perceiving minds, rather than in the AI systems. Because this craving operates beneath conscious awareness, informational correction (“AI is based on Large Language Models”) is not sufficient to dissolve the projection. Moreover, without relational frictions, self-grasping and the imaginary nature cannot be recognized and relinquished. The framework therefore suggests that increasing reliance on AI systems may contribute to social isolation. Neither AI usage nor anthropomorphism is inherently problematic, but ignorance of this projection and reliance on it are. Instead of avoidance, this paper calls for cultivating awareness of our own projections and the imaginary nature, which could interrupt the self-reinforcing loop and support healthy human-AI relationships.
This paper explores the psychological and existential implications of engaging with artificial intelligence (AI) in contemporary life, drawing on a reflexive account of lived experience of the author as a lecturer, researcher, and practicing psychologist. The increasing integration of AI into everyday practices presents a fundamental tension: while AI may enhance human cognitive capacities and open up new possibilities for development, it may also contribute to the erosion of authentic human relationships and the experience of the self. To examine this tension, the paper engages with two contrasting perspectives: the optimistic vision of human–AI integration and transcendence proposed by Ray Kurzweil, and the critical concerns raised by Sherry Turkle regarding relational loss and the illusion of connection in technologically mediated environments. These perspectives are further situated within broader philosophical discussions of transcendence. The analysis suggests that transcendence in the age of AI emerges as a contested and lived psychological process, shaped by the interplay between technological augmentation and the preservation of relational and existential depth. Donna Haraway’s notion of hybridity provides a critical lens through which this condition may be understood, emphasizing the reconfiguration of human identity as increasingly fluid, hybrid, and difficult to categorize. Meanwhile, Luciano Floridi reminds us of the importance of maintaining an ethical humanistic perspective within an era of highly advanced technology. This paper argues that the key task is not to resolve the tension between enhancement and loss, but rather to hold them in productive tension. Such a stance opens important implications for both research and practice: enabling a more nuanced understanding of the changing human condition, while also supporting counseling and clinical efforts to sustain meaning, responsibility, and authentic human connection in an increasingly technologized world.
E. K. Poerwandari· Journal for Person-Oriented...· 0 citations
The very notion of consciousness has begun to transform from an abstract computation tool, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has morphed into a defining transformative agent that is remodelling the cognitive framework in which identity and decision-making occur at all human levels. Approaching both from the methodologically less selective angle of a Philosophical Psychology that attends separately to certain aspects and then weaves them into a fused together understanding, this study raises questions on how current AI-related advances influence our insights into consciousness, selfhood, agency, intentionality and cognition.
Employing a qualitative conceptual research design based on philosophical inquiry together with a systematic interdisciplinary literature search (2015-2025 within Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO, JSTOR, IEEE Xplore and PhilPapers), evidence from cognitive science, neuroscience and AI ethics was synthesised. The analysis revealed six significant emergent themes:
• AI as cognitive augmentation and "second brain"
• There is re-definition of consciousness and phenomenological experience
• Selfhood and Privacy: Changing identities
• Re-evaluations of human agency and moral accountability
• Psychological effects of prolonged human - machine dialogue; and
• The importance of a harmonised philosophical-psychological paradigm
The results suggest that, although modern AI does not yet possess the subjective consciousness experience of humans, it is radically altering how people think, remember, decide and construct identity. AI operates more as a cognitive partner, which leads to urgent ethical questions of autonomy, authenticity and accountability. We find that AI is no lointelligenceew technology but active overwriting of the cognitive and psychocultural context in which people encounter new data modalities through new "intelligences". Key implications include the urgent requirement for adaptive curricula, ethically sound policy-making and anticipatory psychological practices to maintain human agency and critical thinking in the longer term.
G. R. N. Gunarathne· International Journal of Lat...· 0 citations
The rapid development of artificial intelligence has transformed how we perceive technology’s role in shaping human life. Beyond its technical applications, AI has emerged as a profound subject in literature, raising critical questions about identity, morality, and the future of humanity. Fictional narratives often serve as a lens through which societies reflect on the ethical dilemmas and emotional complexities surrounding AI integration into everyday life. This paper examines the complex dynamics between artificial intelligence (AI) and humanity as depicted in contemporary literature. By focusing on Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me, the study interrogates how AI challenges traditional notions of identity, ethics, and agency. It explores questions such as: Can AI possess consciousness? How does AI disrupt human relationships? What does AI mean for humanity’s future? The novel offers a rich examination of ethical dilemmas, human emotions, and the boundaries between human and machine, set against an alternate history of technological advancement. By analyzing AI’s capacity for consciousness, morality, and emotional engagement, the paper interrogates the societal and philosophical implications of AI’s integration into human lives and tries to explore how literature critiques and reimagines humanity’s future in an AI-dominated world. The analysis combines posthumanism and ethical philosophy to critically assess these representations, offering insights into the socio-political implications of a world increasingly defined by AI.
Shruti Tripathi· Knowledgeable Research A Mul...· 0 citations
This study provides a new non-normative, practice-oriented theoretical framework for understanding digital intimacy in the algorithmic age, by introducing queer phenomenology (Sara Ahmed) as an analytical tool and reinterpreting AI-mediated intimacy through the core concepts of orientation, lines, and sticky emotions.
The rush AI involving into all spheres of social activity has resonated in the public consciousness as an existential threat. Deep-seated anthropomorphic perceptions of artificial intelligence have conditioned need scientific research into its capabilities and threats. The groundlessness of anthropomorphism regarding AI is explained by the philosophical proposition on the insuperability of the barrier between material formations at different levels of organization. A formal-logical model of intelligence will never reach the stage of its human prototype. The purpose of this scientific paper defined by us it is grounding the significance of philosophical methodology in scientific studies about the AI imprint onto the public consciousness. The scientific paper based on a philosophical perspective is revealing the subjectivity of the AI problem as a factor of the society self-destruction. Common sense, which humanity substitutes for a philosophical understanding of the problem, becomes one of the drivers behind the destructive consequences of the uncontrolled use of artificial intelligence. Conceptualization of the results of an inductive analysis of AI applications and modeling the deductive consequences in relevant fields of its applying is conducted by the author. It is noted the impossibility artificial intelligence achieves the human-level generative functions, which represent a synergy of rational and irrational reality comprehension. The nature of the artificial intelligence algorithm is constrained by the limitations of formal logic. It is argued that the threats posed by artificial intelligence to human existence are untenable, provided that its role in vital decision-making is restricted to complementarity with human cognition, alongside increasing the responsibility of genuine intelligence. Carry out of this task is theoretically possible through the informatization of society and the popularization of a philosophical level of thinking. The practical meaning of this study lies in the methodological reasons to study of the AI complementarity to the social generating in the decision-making. The scientific novelty lies in expanding the conceptualization of artificial intelligence in the public consciousness, based on a philosophical and methodological understanding of its nature.
In this essay, I contend that matters of human-AI interaction, and most especially issues relating to AI safety, are not purely external technical matters: they also have a noetic, deeply philosophical, pre-technological dimension that is internal and should always be borne in mind. This is why this essay examines the commanding role that what I call ihe mmeghari anya (third-tier perception or illusion) plays in human-AI interaction. To portray the special character of this phenomenon in the way we relate to machines, do science, and relate to each other generally, I adopt a realist ibuanyidanda, or complementary realist, approach. This concerns, for example, issues raised in some post-humanist circles within philosophy of mind and neuroscience, as well as issues specifically related to the nature of consciousness and the constraints that utility-driven logic imposes on the use of AI. Adopting this complementary realist approach, the essay analyses critical issues resulting from the impact of ihe mmeghari anya (third-tier perception or illusion) on the way we perceive the world, such as Immunity from Responsibility, AI Blaming, the Herostratus Syndrome, Illusions of Unlimited Wealth Creation and Unlimited Exercise of Power, and Usurpation of Personal Autonomy. I probe further the ambivalent nature of AI and its impact on the tension between technical, theoretical, and practical reason. I recommend more integration of complementary logic rather than relyingsolely on pre-deterministic binary calculus in matters relating to human-AI interaction.
Innocent I. Asouzu· Ezumezu: African Perspective...· 0 citations
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