In this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, we interview AI and society expert Kate Devlin about the rise of AI companions, sex robots, and the evolving relationship between humans and artificial intelligence. Devlin explores why people fall in love with chatbots despite knowing they lack consciousness, tracing the phenomenon back to ancient myths like Pygmalion and forward through science fiction and shows like “Black Mirror.” She discusses the ethics of AI design, the limits of machine “morality,” concerns about exploitation and “ghost work” behind supposedly autonomous systems, and the need for thoughtful regulation that holds tech companies accountable. The conversation also touches on generational shifts in intimacy, online misogyny, AI’s role in education and law, and the persistent moral panics that accompany new technologies, highlighting Devlin’s view that while AI cannot love us back, the feelings people experience are real, complex, and part of a long human history of forming emotional bonds with our creations.
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So a lot of the science fiction stories feature — usually, if it’s a female robot, they tend to either be incredibly subservient or they tend to break their programming and go rogue, which is sort of a cautionary tale about what happens if feminism gets out of control, and these women break the shackles and rise up against their male owners. There was a “Black Mirror” episode, the “Be Right Back” episode, where the husband dies in a car wreck and she creates or she gets a robot version that she can imprint his leftover messages and videos and everything onto so she can create herself a new version of the husband. But, of course, it’s uncanny — it’s not really him, and it all goes terribly wrong because she doesn’t feel it’s really him. So, lots of good questions there about what we expect, I think, from these artificial alternatives.
