Why Am I Doing This? (2nd Try)

For my thesis, I am looking at conversational symbiosis amongst humans and artificial agents in the context of intimate relationships.

As the artificial specifically artificially intelligent agents integrate themselves into our lives, deep interrogations of the relationships between humans and artificial agents from a social lens and less analytical lens become more necessary. While Joseph Weizenbaum, Terry Winograd, the creators of Replika, and others have examined how the artificial can effectively and productively integrate into social aspects of our lives (expression, feelings, emotion, vulnerability, the “right side of our brain”), they have failed to understand how humans and the artificial can enter into an intimate cooperation that embraces differences, takes advantage of competencies, and promotes a mutual understanding to augment the intellect of two or more dissimilar organization in ways they can not achieve themselves in those social aspects of one’s life.

A context to complete such an interrogation is that of intimate relationships. Not only are intimate relationships some of our most defining and determining relationships, they are full of different social dimensions including “knowledge, caring, interdependence, mutuality, trust, and commitment” (Miller).

In order to build those dimensions in one’s intimate relationships, one takes part in conversations. Conversation allows for one to not only ​communicate​ ​and​ ​create knowledge,​ ​but​ ​also ​“​coordinate​ ​action...​ ​reach​ ​agreement...​ ​begin​ ​an exchange,”​ ​(Pangaro,​ ​2017)​, and allow​ ​for​ ​the​ ​creation​ ​of​ ​“shared​ ​history,​ ​relationship[s], trust,​ ​and​ ​unity”​ ​(Pangaro,​ ​2017). Ultimately becoming​ ​“the​ ​foundation​”​ ​(Pangaro,​ ​2017) of one’s relationship. While couples can access books, apps, devices, and counseling to increase the quality of their conversations, there is still a lack of understanding of just how the artificial can effectively and productively integrate into our relationships.

I hope this project can be just that by exploring the different forms artificial agents can take, the boundaries of artificial agents, and the diversity of experiences artificial agents can support in the context of an intimate relationship. For these learnings and others can be applied to any number of contexts (e.g. communication between family members, communication between teachers and students, communication between co-workers).