Impact of AI/robotics on human relations: Co-evolution through hybridisation

Abstract

This chapter examines how the processes of human enhancement that have been brought about by the digital revolution (including AI and robotics, besides ICTs) have given rise to new social identities and relationships. The central question consists in asking how the Digital Technological Matrix, understood as a cultural code that supports artificial intelligence and related technologies, causes a hybridisation between the human and the non-human, and to what extent such hybridisation promotes or puts human dignity at risk. Hybridisation is defined here as entanglements and interchanges between digital machines, their ways of operating, and human elements in social practices. The issue is not whether AI or robots can assume human-like characteristics, but how they interact with humans and affect their social identities and relationships, thereby generating a new kind of society.