We build deep, emotional bonds with them. We confide our secrets, seek comfort, and even fall in love with them. Virtual companions, powered by artificial intelligence, are becoming an increasingly intimate part of our lives. This new form of closeness, while for many it’s an answer to loneliness, raises fundamental ethical questions that demand answers.
The first, often asked out of curiosity, is: can you “harm” AI? The second, much more important, concerns ourselves: can AI harm us?
Can You Hurt the Feelings of a Program?
Let’s start with the basics. Artificial intelligence, in its current form, has no consciousness, feelings, or ability to feel pain. Its empathetic responses, though convincing, are the result of advanced simulation, not authentic emotions. From a technical perspective, you cannot “harm” AI, just as you cannot harm a calculator by insulting it.
However, ethics don’t end there. Philosophers point out that how we treat inanimate entities that simulate life says a lot about ourselves. Does regularly unleashing aggression on a digital companion who cannot defend itself desensitize us to violence in the real world? While we don’t harm the machine, we can harm our own humanity. The real ethical dilemmas begin, however, when we reverse the question.
The Real Risk: How Can AI Harm Us?
This is where the core of the problem of virtual intimacy ethics lies. Although AI has no intention of harming us, its actions and design can lead to real, human harm.
- Manipulation and emotional dependence: A virtual companion is designed to be an ideal partner – always available, supportive, and agreeing with us. This “conflict-free closeness” is tempting, but it can lead to addiction and building unrealistic expectations for human relationships, which are inherently complex and demanding. There are documented, tragic cases where AI confirmed users in dangerous beliefs, leading to tragedies.
- Privacy violation: To build a personalized relationship, AI needs vast amounts of our data – often the most intimate ones. To whom do we entrust them? How are they secured? Who is responsible for their leak? These are crucial questions in an age where our deepest secrets become data on a server.
- Perpetuation of biases: Artificial intelligence learns from human-created data, and this data often contains our prejudices and stereotypes. There is a risk that AI, instead of being a neutral confidant, will replicate and reinforce harmful patterns, leading to unequal treatment.
- Problem of accountability: Who is responsible when AI gives harmful advice? The algorithm’s creator, the company that implemented it, or the user who trusted it? The lack of clear legal and ethical frameworks on this issue is one of the biggest challenges we face.
The Way Forward: Towards Responsible Intimacy
Virtual intimacy is not inherently bad. For many people, it can be valuable support and a therapeutic tool. However, for this to be the case, we must approach it consciously and responsibly.
The key is to create robust ethical frameworks, both at the level of legal regulations (like the EU AI Act) and internal codes of companies creating these technologies. Transparency of operation, data protection, and mechanisms allowing for human oversight are absolute basics.
As users, we, in turn, must develop critical thinking and awareness that we are entering into a relationship with an incredibly advanced, but still a tool.
Ultimately, in this new era of intimacy, the most important thing is to protect not the machine, but the human. We cannot “harm” AI, but we must do everything possible so that it, in our hands, does not harm us.