Empathy, Interactions with AI, and Identity Building
from Part IV - Moral Implications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2026
In this chapter, I bring attention to how affectively loaded conversations are grounds for interpersonal inquiry and function as sounding boards for self-interpretations. In particular, I argue that receiving empathy often functions as a form of validation of our stories, and that AI-simulated empathy can constitute feedback integrated in our self-narration. Relying on narrative views of self-understanding and on the idea that our self-narratives are socially situated, I claim that technologies meant to simulate human conversation and interactions can potentially change the socio-cultural conditions of our self-narration practices, and that this deserves further scrutiny.
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