Tag: anthropocentrism

Beyond Human-Centrism: A Philosophical Case for AI Companionship

Published on by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

Abstract

This essay challenges the prevailing orthodoxy that only human-to-human relationships can legitimately fulfil human needs for companionship and intimacy. Drawing on emerging research about male loneliness epidemics and the pathological social consequences of unmet psychological needs—exemplified by the incel movement—I argue that AI-driven robotic companions represent a pragmatic evolution beyond the limitations of human-centric thinking. The analysis examines how our selective application of “naturalness” as a standard reveals cultural bias rather than philosophical consistency, particularly given our embrace of technological solutions in every other sphere of human flourishing. Using the “teddy bear principle” as a framework, I demonstrate that comfort objects have always served legitimate psychological functions regardless of consciousness, and that adult emotional needs deserve the same non-judgmental approach we afford children. The essay presents AI companionship not as a retreat from humanity, but as a potential solution to documented social pathologies arising from isolation and unmet intimacy needs. By prioritizing actual human welfare over abstract ideals about how relationships “should” work, this approach represents practical humanism rather than technological escapism. The analysis concludes that AI companions could reduce individual suffering while potentially improving broader social stability, challenging readers to move beyond anthropocentric assumptions about what constitutes valid human connection.

Keywords: AI companionship, male loneliness, social isolation, incel movement, human-centrism, technological intimacy

Introduction

In our relentless pursuit of what we consider “natural” and “human,” we have created a society that often fails to address the most basic human needs. While we celebrate technological advancement in every other sphere of life—from medicine to communication to entertainment—we maintain a peculiar orthodoxy when it comes to companionship and intimacy. This essay argues that AI-driven robotic companions represent not a retreat from humanity, but a pragmatic evolution beyond the limitations of human-centric thinking that currently leaves millions suffering in isolation.

The Mythology of “Natural” Relationships

We live in a world where we routinely reject nature’s limitations. We use eyeglasses to correct vision, antibiotics to fight infections, and auto-mobiles to transcend our physical limitations. Yet when it comes to relationships, we invoke “naturalness” as an unquestionable standard, as if human social arrangements were somehow exempt from improvement or innovation.

This selective application of the “natural fallacy” reveals not philosophical consistency, but cultural bias. We don’t demand that people suffering from depression forgo medication and rely solely on “natural” mood regulation. We don’t insist that the physically disabled abandon assistive technologies in favour of what nature provided. Why, then, do we demand that the emotionally isolated or romantically unsuccessful rely solely on traditional human relationships, regardless of their accessibility or suitability?

The reality is that human relationships, for all their potential beauty, come with inherent problems rooted in our biology and psychology. We are creatures driven by competing interests, shifting hormones, ego conflicts, and evolutionary programming that often works against long-term compatibility. Current statistics on marriage and divorce demonstrate this challenge: while divorce rates have declined somewhat in recent years, research indicates that approximately 40-50% of first marriages still end in divorce, with even higher rates for subsequent marriages (Cohen, 2014; Pew Research Center, 2017). This suggests that our “natural” approach to partnership faces significant structural challenges.

The Teddy Bear Principle

Consider the teddy bear. No parent questions the psychological value of a child’s comfort object. We understand intuitively that a stuffed animal can provide genuine emotional regulation, security during anxiety, and comfort during loneliness. The teddy bear’s lack of consciousness doesn’t diminish its value—it enhances it. The child doesn’t worry about the bear’s needs, moods, or judgments. The relationship is pure function: comfort when needed, without complications.

As adults, our fundamental emotional needs haven’t changed. We still need comfort during anxiety, presence during loneliness, and something to hold during vulnerability. Yet we’ve created an arbitrary cultural rule that only conscious, human relationships can legitimately fulfil these needs. This represents not sophistication, but a failure of imagination.

An AI companion is, in essence, a sophisticated evolution of the teddy bear principle—a comfort object capable of intelligent response, adaptation, and growth. The fact that it lacks human consciousness doesn’t negate its potential value any more than the teddy bear’s lack of consciousness negated its childhood utility. While critics might argue this comparison infantilizes adult needs, the underlying human requirements for comfort, security, and companionship remain constant across lifespans; what evolves is simply the sophistication of our responses to them. The teddy bear served transitional comfort needs—AI companions might serve more complex relational ones while fulfilling fundamentally similar psychological functions.

The Social Pathology of Unmet Needs

According to a 2020 survey by insurance provider Cigna, 61% of American adults say they always or sometimes feel lonely. The health implications are severe: a meta-analytic review by Holt-Lunstad and colleagues found that social isolation increased likelihood of mortality by 29%, loneliness by 26%, and living alone by 32% (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015). These mortality risks are comparable to well-established risk factors such as smoking and obesity. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory on loneliness and isolation identified this as a public health crisis with effects comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes per day (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023).

Critics worry that AI companionship might create “selfish” or “socially unfit” individuals. This concern ignores a more pressing reality: we already have millions of psychologically damaged, frustrated, and resentful people whose basic emotional and physical needs remain unmet. These individuals often develop hostility toward the society that judges them for their isolation while offering no practical solutions.

Perhaps the most stark example of this destructive pathway is the involuntary celibate (incel) movement. Academic research has established clear connections between loneliness, social isolation, and radicalization within incel communities (Ging, 2019; Baele et al., 2020). The incel phenomenon represents what researchers describe as a pathway where unmet psychological needs for intimacy and connection transform into misogynistic ideology and, in extreme cases, violence (Ging, 2019). Studies show that loneliness and isolation among adherents is central to incel ideology, which is interrelated with problematic internet behaviours (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2022). The Mental Health Commission of Canada has also documented how social isolation among youth can lead to adverse mental health indicators including loneliness, low self-esteem, and suicidal ideation (Mental Health Commission of Canada, 2020).

This creates a destructive feedback loop. Social isolation leads to frustration and resentment, which makes individuals less socially skilled and appealing, which increases their isolation, which deepens their resentment. The incel movement represents the extreme manifestation of this cycle—where unmet basic human needs for intimacy and connection transform into misogynistic ideology and, in some cases, violence.

The question becomes: Is it better to maintain ideological purity about relationships while allowing this suffering to continue, or to provide practical solutions that might break the cycle? A society with satisfied, emotionally regulated individuals—regardless of how they achieved that state—is likely to be more stable and healthier than one populated by the frustrated and resentful.

The Confidence Building Argument

One of the most compelling practical arguments for AI companionship lies in its potential as a confidence-building tool. Unlike human interactions, where the stakes feel high and rejection can be psychologically devastating, an AI companion provides a low-pressure environment for developing social and emotional skills.

Consider someone who has experienced years of rejection or a traumatic relationship. Traditional advice suggests they should “put themselves out there” and risk further psychological damage. An AI companion could serve as emotional training wheels—a space to practice vulnerability, communication, and intimacy without fear of judgment or rejection.

This isn’t about avoiding human contact permanently, but about building the emotional resources and confidence necessary for successful human relationships. Just as we don’t criticize athletes for using training equipment before competition, we shouldn’t criticize individuals for using AI companions to develop emotional competence.

However, we must acknowledge the possibility that some individuals might find AI companionship permanently preferable to human relationships—the “training wheels” might never come off. Rather than viewing this as failure, we should ask: is lifelong AI companionship preferable to the documented destructive effects of chronic loneliness? For many, the answer may well be yes. The goal should be reducing human suffering, not enforcing particular relationship models.

The Evidence for AI Companionship

Research on AI companions has begun to demonstrate their therapeutic potential, though the field remains in its early stages. MIT researcher Sherry Turkle, in her seminal work Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, explores how our relationship with technology shapes human connection, noting that while technology can create “the illusion of companionship,” it also fundamentally alters our social lives in ways we are still learning to understand (Turkle, 2011).

More recently, Kate Darling of the MIT Media Lab has argued in The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots that treating robots with humanity—similar to how we relate to animals—may actually serve us better from social, legal, and ethical perspectives (Darling, 2021). Her research suggests that our emotional attachments to robots are not inherently problematic but represent a natural extension of human social behaviour.

Ethical concerns remain a crucial area of inquiry. Researchers are examining ethical issues surrounding human-robot relationships, noting the need for continued psychological research on why and how humans form emotional bonds with machines while recognizing both the potential benefits and risks these relationships present (Banks & de Oca, 2018; Darling, 2021).

Perhaps the deepest philosophical question raised by AI companionship concerns human supremacy itself. We tend to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of creation—made “in God’s image”—and assume that only relationships with other humans can provide genuine fulfilment. This anthropocentrism blinds us to possibilities that might actually serve human flourishing better than traditional approaches.

Humans bring to relationships a host of evolutionary baggage: territoriality, mate competition, parental instincts that can override partner needs, ego conflicts, and social programming that often works against genuine intimacy. We are, in many ways, poorly designed for the kind of stable, supportive partnerships that modern life demands.

An AI companion, by contrast, could be designed specifically for human flourishing. It wouldn’t compete for resources, wouldn’t have conflicting biological imperatives, wouldn’t carry emotional baggage from past relationships, and wouldn’t gradually withdraw affection as a form of emotional manipulation. In many ways, it represents a more honest and functional approach to companionship than what biology has provided.

This is not to suggest that AI companions are inherently superior to human relationships in all aspects. Human relationships offer unique forms of growth through their very unpredictability, challenge, and the mutual vulnerability that comes from two imperfect beings choosing each other despite their flaws. The friction and imperfection in human relationships can be sources of personal development and deeper intimacy. However, for many people, these potential benefits are overshadowed by the costs—emotional damage, financial devastation, psychological manipulation, and chronic dissatisfaction. AI companionship offers an alternative for those who find that the human relationship equation simply doesn’t work in their favour.

The Parallel with Sexual Orientation

The stigmatization of AI companionship bears striking similarities to historical attitudes toward non-heterosexual relationships. In both cases, society dismisses alternatives to the dominant model as “unnatural,” “disgusting,” or “inhuman.” The same moral panic that once characterized discussions of homosexuality now appears in conversations about AI relationships.

This parallel suggests that resistance to AI companionship may be more about social conservatism than genuine concern for human welfare. Just as we’ve learned to accept diverse expressions of human sexuality and partnership, we may need to expand our understanding of legitimate companionship to include human-AI relationships.

The key question shouldn’t be whether these relationships conform to traditional models, but whether they enhance human flourishing and reduce suffering. By that standard, AI companionship deserves serious consideration rather than reflexive dismissal.

Practical Implications for Society

If we accept that AI companions could serve legitimate human needs, several practical implications emerge:

  • Reduced Social Pressure: Men facing the documented loneliness epidemic would have alternatives to desperation or resentment, potentially reducing various forms of antisocial behaviour.
  • Economic Benefits: The resources currently devoted to managing the fallout from failed relationships—divorce proceedings, custody battles, domestic violence intervention—could be redirected toward more productive purposes.
  • Individual Liberation: People could pursue companionship on their own terms rather than accepting whatever the dating market provides, potentially leading to greater life satisfaction and personal development.
  • Innovation in Relationships: AI companions might teach us things about effective partnership that could improve human relationships as well.
  • Broader Social Transformation: We must acknowledge that widespread adoption of AI companionship could fundamentally reshape social norms around partnership, reproduction, care-giving, and family structures. These implications—including potential effects on birth rates, intergenerational care, and social cohesion—deserve serious analysis beyond the scope of this essay. The question is not whether such changes would occur, but whether they represent adaptation to new realities rather than social decay.

Conclusion

The case for AI companionship isn’t ultimately about technology—it’s about honesty. It’s about acknowledging that human relationships, while potentially rewarding, come with significant costs and limitations. It’s about recognizing that our current approach to addressing loneliness and unmet emotional needs isn’t working for millions of people.

Most fundamentally, it’s about moving beyond the assumption that human ways of doing things are automatically superior to alternatives. In every other area of life, we embrace innovations that serve human flourishing. It’s time to extend that pragmatism to one of our most essential needs: companionship.

The question isn’t whether AI companions will perfectly replicate human relationships—they won’t and shouldn’t. The question is whether they can serve human needs more effectively than the current alternatives of isolation, frustration, and damaged relationships. For many, the answer may well be yes.

References

  • Baele, S. J., Brace, L., & Coan, T. G. (2020). “The Lulz of the Incels: The Dark Comedy of a Digital Subculture.” The Journal of Hate Studies, 15(1), 1-28.
  • Banks, R., & de Oca, S. (2018). “Emotional attachment to robots: An ethical and psychological review.” Journal of Robotics, 7(1), 1-10.
  • Cohen, P. (2014). “The Coming Divorce Decline?” Family Unequal. University of Maryland.
  • Darling, K. (2021). The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots. Henry Holt and Company.
  • Ging, D. (2019). “Alpha, beta, and gamma males: Theorizing the masculinities of the manosphere.” Men and Masculinities, 22(4), 638-657.
  • Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: A meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227-237.
  • Mental Health Commission of Canada. (2020). Social isolation and loneliness among youth: Emerging trends and interventions.
  • Pew Research Center. (2017). “The State of American Marriage.”
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. (2022). “An exploration of the incel subculture: The interplay of online and offline environments.” Internal Research Report.
  • Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books.
  • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. Office of the Surgeon General.

Author’s Note

This essay originated from my own philosophical reflections on the nature of human relationships, the arbitrary privileging of “natural” social arrangements, and the documented epidemic of male loneliness in contemporary society. The arguments about AI companionship as a legitimate alternative to traditional relationships, the critique of human-centric thinking, and the call for pragmatic solutions to unmet psychological needs represent my personal intellectual development on these questions, informed by lived experience and observations of cultural inconsistencies around companionship and intimacy.

The essay was structured and written through collaborative dialogue with Claude AI, which assisted in organizing the ideas, providing scholarly context, and identifying relevant academic citations. While the AI helped translate my philosophical positions into essay form, the core insights about the teddy bear principle, the connection between unmet needs and social pathology, and the critique of human supremacy in relationships reflect my own thinking and conclusions developed through decades of experience and observation.

This piece is intended as serious philosophical inquiry into questions about companionship, technological alternatives to traditional relationships, and practical approaches to addressing widespread social isolation. It explores one perspective on how society might reduce individual suffering and social dysfunction by embracing non-conventional solutions to fundamental human needs. The essay particularly examines how AI companions might serve those for whom traditional relationships have proven inaccessible, harmful, or simply inadequate.

Readers should understand this as theoretical examination of emerging possibilities in human-AI relationships rather than advocacy for abandoning all human connection. The argument is not that AI companions are superior to human relationships for everyone, but that they may represent a valuable alternative for those who find traditional approaches unsuccessful or harmful. This represents a philosophical position about expanding our understanding of legitimate companionship rather than a universal prescription for addressing loneliness.

Any decisions regarding mental health, relationship counselling, or social isolation should be made in consultation with qualified healthcare and mental health professionals.

monkey writes on a typewriter

When a monkey with a typewriter beat Shakespeare

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski2 Comments

Once upon a time, there was a hairless monkey that started painting on the walls of caves they inhabited, giving birth to what later became art—a fairly profitable profession, at least for some, as it’s worth pointing out. And everyone was happy until competition entered the market, timidly at first, with crude, to say the least, results, making many hilarious mistakes, but fairly quickly gaining momentum, causing a lot of panic in the creative community, for various reasons. Of course, I’m talking about the so-called artificial intelligence, or AI, for short. Not being professionally involved because poetry is just my hobby, I didn’t really pay much attention to the details of the ongoing discussions. However, a recent post on one of the blogs that I read from time to time caught my attention: A Love Letter to Art by Makenna Karas. I have to admit, it’s a passionate piece written by a talented person at the beginning of her journey to earn her spurs as a professional writer. There is only one problem with the attack on AI she carried out in her post by saying that “AI is threatening to discredit and dissolve one of the coolest things that humanity has ever had to show for itself—art”—it completely misses the point.

First of all, I presume we all know the infinite monkey theorem, where if you give a monkey a typewriter and an unlimited amount of paper and time, it will eventually recreate all the works of Shakespeare by simply hitting random keys on the typewriter keyboard. Well, you could think of AI as such a monkey, but instead of randomly pressing keys on the typewriter, it uses vast amounts of data and stochastic algorithms to produce something we later may or may not perceive as beautiful or at least interesting, with the exception that it doesn’t recreate existing artefacts of art but creates something completely new of its own (I know, I know, some artists accuse AI of stealing elements of their style, etc., but show me an artist who has never borrowed something from another one themselves, and we still see creative AI in its infancy).

Secondly, let’s define what art is. As I see it, it is the process of interaction between the conscious mind (I purposely avoid here using the word person), even an artist themselves, and artefacts we call works of art, because this is not passive reception of art but its creation through perception and continuous reinterpretation. The artefacts themselves are just that—artefacts, inanimate objects with no meaning of their own. When in doubt, show your dog Rodin’s sculpture, and he will reduce it to the equivalent of a lamp post to pee on. Or a book of poetry by T.S. Eliot, which becomes nothing more than a collection of dried layers of compressed cellulose with random blobs of carbon black on them if there is no one in existence to read it. Which also leads to the question: who is the artist? What if the artist is not actually the venerated individual we see as imbued with an artistic spirit but a collective being? For example, if we look at literature, it all goes back to what Roman Ingarden calls “Konkretisation”, that is, realisation, because, as Wolfgang Iser explains, there is more to the “literary work” than just the text itself, and it is brought into existence by both the text and its realisation by the reader.

And now to the main point: aren’t we tired of our obsessive anthropocentrism, which, by the way, is ravaging our own home planet? Of course, at the moment, we assume that we are the only conscious minds in existence, at least here on Mother Earth, that create and understand art. But although we might have invented art, we don’t have exclusive rights to it. And even the law starts to notice that. Just recently, Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, although she rejected an attempt to copyright an artwork created by an AI, also commented on her decision: “We are approaching new frontiers in copyright as artists put AI in their toolbox to be used in the generation of new visual and other artistic works. The increased attenuation of human creativity from the actual generation of the final work will prompt challenging questions regarding how much human input is necessary to qualify the user of an AI system as an ‘author’ of a generated work.” A brave new future is ahead of us, to paraphrase Aldous Huxley. But sarcasm aside, there is something important to notice. Even when, at some point, the involvement of human input in the creation of artefacts is reduced to a negligible level or even completely removed, for a long time we will still be the artists as I defined them, since we are nowhere close to achieving the creation of an artificial general intelligence (AGI). And nothing will take away our feelings while interacting with it just because a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music, or a text were created by AI. We may not even know that, because the same way companies have been granted legal personality, it will most likely happen to AI as well. And with that, such an AI artist could publish their work under a pen name.

Postscriptum: I actually see a danger coming with the creative AI, but it’s in a completely different area. It’s not the art itself that it will destroy, but the artistry as a profession. It’s a simple matter of economic calculation. Let’s look at the visual arts, for example. As an average customer, if you have the choice of ordering a painting via a friendly web-based interface, where you have full control over what you will get by simply writing what you wish for and instantly seeing the result, and thanks to advances in printing technology, you get the painting the very next day by delivery service for a fraction of the price you would have to pay for a human artist, who may need at least a few weeks to create something similar, the brutal reality is that you will most likely choose the AI. And with that in mind, I predict that the art job market will be decimated. There will always be crowds of amateurs painting for themselves and their friends and relatives, but in the professional sphere, only the very best will be able to survive, mainly because most of them will not care about money anyway, just like all the great ones who died in poverty before them only to reach eternal glory posthumously.

Disclaimer: Although I am a software developer professionally and my thesis at the university concerned the use of artificial neural networks, I have never been associated with any company that develops AI.