Jul 2026· Journal for Cultural Research· Vol 30, pp. 477 - 486· 0 citations· 5 references
TL;DR
It is argued that the uncanny benefits from being combined with notions of ‘flipping’ friendship – in the sense that it locates the ambivalence of cultural representations of AI companions in relations, rather than mechanics.
Abstract
ABSTRACT In a time when the social, economic and ethical implications of artificial intelligence on society are subject to intense debate, films and novels are conducive theoretical can openers into the complexities of what it means to live with artificial companions. With the purpose of examining and describing how we relate to and interact with such AI-powered life-simulating machines, the article turns to a qualitative analysis of contemporary anglophone literary texts and films. In works by Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Disney’s Lightyear and the Alien franchise, AI companions tend to be portrayed as agents capable of eliciting conflicting social responses in humans – conceptualised here as ‘flipping’. The notion of uncanniness is applied to capture the general unreliability of artificial intelligence in the cultural imagination, and it is argued that the uncanny benefits from being combined with notions of ‘flipping’ friendship – in the sense that it locates the ambivalence of cultural representations of AI companions in relations, rather than mechanics. From this platform of cultural analysis, the article contributes a social dimension to analytical endeavours aimed at understanding the meaning of artificial companions in today’s world.
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 study examines two contemporary English novels that explore artificial intelligence and posthuman subjectivity. Through a detailed analysis of the works, the study examines how these works of fiction present artificial intelligence as more than just a technological creation, but as a narrative creation that has a role to play in the construction of subjectivity and humanism. From a post humanist perspective, informed by the works of Rosi Braidotti and N. Katherine Hayles, the study argues that works of fiction on artificial intelligence are not just a representation of the fear of being replaced by technology, but a critical analysis of moral and existential questions of human vulnerability, identity, and responsibility. Not only do these works of fiction present artificial intelligence as being capable of emotions and cognitions, but they are also a commentary on the limitations of humanity itself, thereby blurring the lines between what is human and what is non-human. It concludes that such a dimension of literary imagination is simultaneously one of the critical spaces contemporary English fiction occupies within philosophy. The influence of the term "posthuman" to showcase art around an AI in itself constitutes a form of criticism, framing AI as an extensive drug that tends the human longings through which we construct time and future (Braidotti, 2013, pp. 48–55).
Lect. Hassan Hadi Yasir· Journal of College of Educat...· 0 citations
This review analyses Simone Natale's Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test from a cultural-historical, media-theoretical, and information-ethics perspective. Natale's idea of a "performative intelligence" puts forward the notion that AI is not an autonomous or neutral technology, but rather it is a socially constructed illusion tied to historical models, media stories, design strategies and patterns of use. By examining old (i.e.: ELIZA and PARRY) and new (modern chatbots and voice assistants) AI, the book reveals that even AI's illusion of intelligence primarily depends on mimicry, anthropomorphizing, and cultural prescripts. This review demonstrates the importance of Natale's book for library and information science as it places AI in context with larger structures of knowledge production, misinformation, surveillance, and information literacy. Ultimately, Natale demands more accountability among developers, institutions, and users, which places Deceitful Media as a strong contribution to the critical literature of AI, media and information ethics.
Referred to by Julian Huxley in his 1957 work New Bottles for New Wine, transhumanism champions the use of science and technology to transcend human biological limits and attain a “posthuman” state. While science fiction frequently familiarizes audiences with these speculative dimensions, William Gibson’s short story The Winter Market (1986) exposes the dehumanizing impacts of technological immortality and mind uploading in a cyberpunk world. Rather than presenting a seamless techno-utopian future, Gibson’s narrative centers on the concept of gomi—Japanese for trash or junk—to illustrate the literal and psychological expulsion of the human subject. Therefore, this paper argues that The Winter Market uses the material reality of gomi as its core structural and thematic focus, exposing how advanced capitalism and cybernetic technology reduce the organic body, human experience, and artistic expression to marketable, discarded commodities. Through a close reading of Gibson’s distinct language and narrative form, this study, ultimately, interrogates the trade-offs of technological transcendence, demonstrating how the pursuit of disembodied immortality culminates in alienation and the fragmentation of authentic identity.
Unchecked artificial intelligence strengthened by large language models poses a crisis that reaches past ethics into ontology, and it demands that we reconfigure the basic categories of anthropological theology. Working by a hermeneutical–constructive method that places biblical exegesis in dialogue with philosophical thinking, this article advances three interconnected theses. The first is that contemporary AI is reminiscent of the theological hubris of the Tower of Babel narrative (Genesis 11:1–9); both instantiate a closed system of signification that forecloses transcendence by collapsing the distinction between naming and being named. The second concerns what algorithmic governance produces—what Giorgio Agamben calls bare life, a condition the biblical theology of nakedness in Genesis 2–3 can inversely illuminate, and which Simone Weil’s analysis of attention as decreative receptivity sharpens by exposing algorithmic distractedness as the spiritual antipode of contemplative openness. The third is christological: Agamben’s potentiality–impotentiality and Weil’s attention and décréation converge with the kenosis of Philippians 2:5–11 to ground an anthropology of voluntary self-emptying instead of replicable capacity. Reading imago Dei with Paul Ricœur as a dynamic process and drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics of alterity, I argue that authentic existence in the algorithmic age requires a “second nakedness”, a deliberate refusal of egotistical self-assertion that reopens creaturely dependence, so that God’s grace becomes operative in the common life of humanity.
Findings suggest that the LLM-chatbot Replika employs a consistent pragmatic strategy that activates the human tendency to interpret conversational agents as social others, as described by the Postphenomenology of Technology.
M. Buzato, E. Mestre-Mestre, Rodrigo Esteves de Lima-Lopes et al.· Corpus Pragmatics· 1 citation
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