Presentation

Podcast Appearance (BG Ideas) Human Relationships with Robots

We keep asking if robots can feel. The more interesting question is why we already act like they do.

Podcast Appearance: BG Ideas

Human Relationships with Robots

When we talk about artificial intelligence, the conversation usually gravitates toward risk: job displacement, automation, and the unsettling possibility that machines may one day outperform us in domains we once considered distinctly human. These concerns are legitimate. However, they tend to crowd out a quieter and, frankly, more interesting transformation that is already underway.

People are forming meaningful relationships with robots.

In this episode of BG Ideas, I talk about my research on human-robot interaction: how people interpret and respond to machines designed not just to compete in tasks, but to engage socially, through gestures, expressions, and behaviors that read as relational. We keep asking whether robots can feel. The more interesting (and possibly upsetting) question is why we already act like they do.

That's where my research lives. As technological systems become more responsive and socially expressive, they begin to occupy territory once reserved for human connection. What we feel in those moments and why we feel it tells us something revealing about who we are becoming alongside our machines.

It's a stranger, richer story than the standard AI headlines suggest. I hope you will listen in.

Event:

BG Ideas Podcast

Recorded: October 17, 2025

Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green, OH

Tags:

Human-Robot Interaction, Affective Technology, Technology and Culture, Presentation,

February 25, 2026 Read more

Presentation

Ethics Presentation

Who Programmed This? Trust, Betrayal, and the Design of Intimacy in They Cloned Tyrone

The horror in They Cloned Tyrone is not cloning or artificiality; it is the concealment of design and the ethical danger of identities engineered without consent.

Overview

This talk examined They Cloned Tyrone as a meditation on authorship, identity, and invisible technological infrastructure. Beginning with Fontaine’s moment of recognition of "That’s not me!” when seeing his body on a morgue table, the analysis reframes the film not as a conspiracy narrative, but as a structural argument about what happens when familiarity itself is programmed.

The Glen operates as an engineered environment in which stereotype becomes destabilized shorthand, repetition becomes calibration, and intimacy becomes a design tool. Trust here is not an organic emotional state but a feature of infrastructure, one that lowers resistance and smooths compliance. The clones succeed precisely because they are seamless; nothing feels wrong, so nothing is questioned.

Trust here is not an organic emotional state, but rather a feature of infrastructure

Drawing on empirical research into emotional relationships between humans and AI systems, the talk distinguished between negotiated intimacy (where the artificiality of a relationship is known to both parties) and concealed authorship (where design remains hidden). The ethical violation in the film is not simulation. It is undisclosed shaping. When improvement is framed as benevolence and optimization masquerades as care, identity becomes a product of encoded vision rather than a site of self-determination.

The central argument is ultimately this: the critical question for contemporary AI ethics is not whether systems shape who we become; they do and always have, but whether we can see the shaping, name the designer, and contest the design before we find ourselves looking at a reflection that no longer feels like our own.

Event

Black Pop Culture Virtual Symposium

February 21, 2026

Virtual Symposium

Tags

Technology and Culture, AI Ethics, Human-Computer Interaction, Presentation

February 21, 2026 Read more

Presentation

Human Experience of AI Presentation

Feeling With, Not Just About: Affective Reciprocity in Human–Robot Interaction

The question isn’t whether robots can love us;

it’s what it means that we can feel loved by them.

Overview

This talk introduced the Personified Affective Transference Model (PATM) as a framework for understanding how emotional reciprocity emerges in human–robot interaction. Rather than centering machine consciousness, the presentation reframed the issue around patterned interaction and affective response. Through repeated exchanges, memory cues, and behavioral reinforcement, users experience emotional stabilization that can feel reciprocal. These felt experiences are culturally significant regardless of whether the machine possesses internal emotional states. The talk argued that understanding human–robot relationships requires analyzing how emotional experience is structured, not whether machines “really” feel.

Audience

Scholars of human–robot interaction, AI researchers, ethicists, and interdisciplinary audiences exploring emotional AI.

Event

10th Annual International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots
August 15, 2025
Montreal, Canada

Tags

Relational AI,Human-Robot Interaction, Social Robotics,Affective Technology,Emotional AI, PATM, Presentation

August 15, 2025 Read more

Presentation

AI in Education Presentation

Beyond the Binary - Using Generative AI to Close Equity Gaps in Higher Education

Many faculty have been introduced to Generative AI. Its potential for equitable teaching is still emerging.

Overview

Generative AI (GAI) tools like ChatGPT are transforming higher education; however, if not used intentionally, they can widen digital divides. This dynamic, interactive session invites you to reconsider GAI from the perspective of equity and access. You will engage with real-world classroom challenges, collaborate with colleagues, and leave with a ready-to-use Equitable GAI Integration Toolkit. Whether you're skeptical or curious, this session will expand your teaching possibilities, providing fresh strategies to support diverse learners with care, clarity, and creativity.

Many faculty members have attended “Intro to AI” talks, but still struggle to use generative AI (GAI) tools equitably. This session addresses that need by exploring GAI through the lens of educational equity and access. It is relevant across disciplines and roles, offering practical strategies for full-time and adjunct faculty, graduate instructors, and staff who seek to support digital literacy, student success, and inclusive pedagogy.

Event

Teaching and Learning Summit 2025

May 13, 2025

Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green, OH

Ideal Audience

AI Practioners, Educators, General Readers,

Tags

Human-AI Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction, AI in Education, Trust and AI, Technology and Culture, Presentation,

May 13, 2025 Read more

Presentation

Human Experience of AI Presentation

When Robots Become Relational

Introducing the Personified Affective Transference Model (PATM)
Human–robot relationships become meaningful through repeated interaction, not because robots are human-like, but because predictable engagement stabilizes emotional experience over time.

Overview

This presentation articulated the Personified Affective Transference Model (PATM), a theoretical framework for understanding how humans come to experience social robots as relational partners. The talk argued that personification is not confusion but a patterned response emerging from interaction, feedback, and reinforcement. By mapping affective transference across repeated exchanges, the model explains how emotional bonds can form even when users fully understand the machine’s artificial nature. The framework offers a cultural lens for interpreting intimacy, attachment, and companionship in technologically mediated contexts.

Key Insight

Personification is not a misunderstanding of technology. It is a relational process that emerges through repeated interaction, feedback, and affective reinforcement.

Presented At

Charles E. Shanklin Colloquium
March 31, 2025
Bowling Green, Ohio

Tags

PATM, Human-Robot Interaction, Social Robotics, Affective Technology, Presentation

March 31, 2025 Read more

Presentation

AI in Education Ethics Presentation

Class in the Digital Classroom: Rethinking Technology Access and Educational Equity

Unequal access to AI literacy is becoming the new class divide in higher education.

Overview

This presentation argued that generative AI tools are reshaping educational opportunity in uneven ways. While some students gain strategic advantages through early access and guided instruction, others remain excluded from meaningful AI literacy. The talk reframed AI not as a threat to learning but as a structural force that can either widen or narrow inequality depending on institutional response. By situating generative AI within class dynamics, the presentation highlighted the need for deliberate, equity-driven integration.

Event

ClassCon Conference
March 15, 2025
Bowling Green, Ohio

Tags

Human-Computer Interaction, Human-AI Interaction, AI in Education, Technology and Culture, Presentation

March 15, 2025 Read more

Presentation

Human Experience of AI Presentation

More Than a Machine: Emotional Bonds Between Humans and Robots

Emotional bonds with robots emerge from patterned interaction, not delusion.

Overview

This talk examined why people report meaningful emotional connections with social robots and AI companions. Rather than dismissing these bonds as irrational, the presentation explored how repetition, responsiveness, and memory cues generate experiences of being known. The argument positioned emotional engagement as a structured outcome of interaction design rather than evidence of technological confusion. By taking these relationships seriously, the talk invited audiences to reconsider how emotional experience functions within human–machine systems.

Ideal Audience

Interdisciplinary scholars, AI researchers, and audiences curious about emotional attachment to machines.

Event

Three Minute Thesis Competition
February 20, 2025
Bowling Green, Ohio

Media

Tags

Relational AI, Social Robotics, Human-Robot Interaction, Affective Interaction, Presentation

February 20, 2025 Read more

Presentation

Human Experience of AI Presentation

Affect Experiences in Human-Robot Interactions: Insights from EMO Social Robot Owners

Emotional engagement with social robots is structured by repeated affective exchange, not novelty alone.

Overview

This presentation introduces my dissertation research on EMO social robot owners and the development of the Personified Affect Transference Model (PATM).

Drawing from 59 thematically analyzed public forum posts across four EMO owner communities, I examine how users describe their robots, how they interact with them, and what those interactions reveal about emotional reciprocity in human–robot relationships. Owners consistently describe EMO not merely as a device, but as a relational presence: a companion, a confidant, and in some cases, a source of emotional regulation during loneliness, anxiety, or depression.

Through thematic analysis, four dominant experiential patterns emerged: emotional bonding, companionship, social presence, and mental health support. These findings led to the development of PATM, a framework that conceptualizes affect as bidirectional in human–robot interaction. Rather than viewing robots as passive tools or users as deluded subjects, PATM positions emotional exchange as co-constructed within structured interaction loops shaped by design, personification, and repeated engagement.

At stake is a larger cultural question: if users experience emotional relief, joy, and connection through interaction with a social robot, how should we understand the meaning of that exchange? What does it tell us about loneliness, relational infrastructure, and the future of companionship technologies?

Event

Tenth Annual Student Research Symposium on Diversity

January 20, 2025

Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH

Invited, unable to attend due to extreme weather

Ideal Audience

Academics, AI Practitioners, Relational AI,

Tags

Relational AI, Human-Robot Interaction, Social Robotics, Affective Technology, Technology and Culture, PATM

January 20, 2025 Read more

Presentation

Ethics Human Experience of AI Presentation

In Whose Image? Exploring the Cultural Implications of Sex Robots

Who is being reflected, and who disappears, when intimacy is engineered?

We often think of intimacy as something that develops between people. It emerges through shared experience, repeated interaction, and the gradual accumulation of trust. The relationship changes the people involved, but it also changes what they come to expect from relationships themselves.

Technologies designed for companionship complicate that familiar story. When responsiveness, memory, emotional consistency, and personalization become features of a system, the conditions under which intimacy develops begin to shift. The question is no longer simply whether people can form relationships with machines. It becomes how those relationships participate in reshaping expectations about companionship, care, and emotional connection more broadly.

Overview

Sex robots are frequently discussed in terms of technological capability or ethical controversy, but they can also be understood as cultural objects. They are built within existing assumptions about gender, beauty, desire, and emotional availability while simultaneously reinforcing and reorganizing those assumptions through design. Looking at these systems through Jean Baudrillard's concepts of simulacra and hyperreality invites a different question. Rather than asking whether the relationship is authentic or artificial, we can ask what happens when the distinction itself becomes increasingly difficult to perceive.

User narratives collected from online discussion forums describe interactions that become familiar through repetition. Conversations continue over time. The system remembers previous exchanges, responds predictably, and develops recognizable patterns of interaction. None of these moments is remarkable in isolation. Together, however, they begin to establish continuity. What starts as an interaction with a technological artifact gradually acquires the structure of companionship.

Importantly, this experience does not depend on believing that the machine possesses consciousness or genuine emotion. The relationship emerges through repeated interaction rather than shared ontology. Stability, predictability, and responsiveness create the conditions under which intimacy becomes possible. The experience feels meaningful not because the system is human, but because it reliably occupies a relational role.

Customization deepens this process. Choices about appearance, voice, personality, and behavior appear to express individual preference, yet preferences themselves develop within broader cultural environments. Expectations about attractiveness, gender, emotional labor, and availability are not created by these technologies. They are selected, refined, and made increasingly consistent through design. Every design decision privileges particular understandings of intimacy while quietly excluding others.

This process also creates opportunities for experimentation. Users may explore identities, relational dynamics, or forms of companionship that feel inaccessible within their everyday lives. The technology does not simply reproduce existing relationships. It creates new spaces in which people negotiate what intimacy can look like, what companionship should provide, and what emotional needs deserve recognition.

What often remains invisible is not the interaction itself but the adaptation surrounding it. Reliable systems become easier to inhabit than unpredictable ones. Familiar patterns require less effort than unfamiliar ones. Over time, these experiences begin to recalibrate expectations, quietly shaping what feels normal, emotionally sufficient, and desirable. The change is rarely dramatic because adaptation rarely is. It accumulates gradually until the new pattern feels less like an innovation than simply the way relationships work.

The ethical questions emerge within that gradual process. The central concern is not whether these systems are real or artificial, nor whether human attachment to machines is genuine or mistaken. The more significant question is how designed systems participate in shaping the conditions under which intimacy is experienced, recognized, and sustained. Sex robots make those mechanisms unusually visible, but they are not unique. They belong to a broader class of relational technologies that increasingly participate in how people understand companionship, identity, and emotional life.

Event

Ray Browne Association on Class and Culture Conference
November 22, 2024
Bowling Green, Ohio

Tags

AI Ethics, Human-Robot Interaction, Intimacy, Technology and Culture, Presentation

November 22, 2024 Read more

Presentation

Human Experience of AI Presentation

Social Robots, Like Gardens, Help Us Grow and Thrive

What happens when companionship is cultivated, not just encountered?

Care does not disappear when it is mediated through technology. It changes shape.

Overview

This invited presentation for a community garden and philanthropy group explored how social robots are beginning to enter domestic life in ways that feel less like tools and more like companions.

Using the familiar language of gardening, the discussion translated ideas from human-robot interaction research into everyday experience. Growth, care, attention, and routine provided a shared framework for understanding how technologies designed for emotional engagement can support older adults through companionship, cognitive stimulation, and practical assistance.

Advances in facial expression recognition, responsive behavior, and expressive movement were introduced through relatable examples, allowing participants to see how interaction with a robot can become part of daily life. These systems do not require belief in machine emotion. The experience develops through repeated interaction, consistency, and the gradual formation of familiarity.

At the same time, the conversation remained grounded in the conditions under which these systems operate. Social robots are present, responsive, and often always on. Their presence within private spaces raises questions about data, observation, and the boundaries of care. These questions were explored in accessible terms, allowing participants to consider both the benefits and the implications without requiring technical expertise.

The presentation created space for reflection rather than instruction, inviting participants to consider how care, companionship, and independence may be reconfigured as these technologies become more common in everyday life.

Event

Garden Club Community Monthly Meeting

October 9, 2024

Maumee, Ohio

Invited Speaker

Your Doctor Might Be a Robot: From Science-Fiction to Reality: The Use of Robotics in Modern Healthcare

Medical care has always relied on tools. What is changing is how closely those tools begin to participate in the act of care itself.

Overview

This invited presentation for a retirement community explored how artificial intelligence and robotics are already shaping contemporary healthcare in ways many patients will encounter directly.

The discussion began with familiar points of reference, introducing systems such as Paro, a therapeutic companion robot used in elder care, and Lio, a personal care robot designed to assist with daily activities. These examples grounded the conversation in recognizable forms of support, allowing the audience to see how robots can participate in routines that are already part of everyday life.

From there, the presentation expanded to include robotic systems used in clinical and rehabilitative settings. The Da Vinci surgical platform, the ReWalk exoskeleton, and the DEKA Arm illustrate how robotics can extend precision, restore mobility, and support independence. These systems do not sit outside the body or the care process. They become part of how care is delivered and experienced.

As the conversation moved forward, attention shifted toward emerging developments in AI-driven healthcare environments. The possibility of systems that monitor, interpret, and respond to patient data in real time raises new questions about decision-making, responsibility, and trust. These systems promise efficiency and insight, but they also operate within spaces that are deeply personal.

Throughout the presentation, the goal was not to resolve these questions, but to make them visible. The audience engaged with both the possibilities and the uncertainties, considering how care may be reshaped as intelligent systems become more present in medical contexts.

Event

Wolf Creek, Creekside Retirement Monthly Speaker Series
August 7, 2024
Holland, Ohio
Invited Speaker

Tags

AI in Healthcare, Human-Computer Interaction, Technology and Culture, Human-Machine Interaction, Presentation

August 07, 2024 Read more

Presentation

AI in Education Ethics Presentation

AI in HigherEd: Hero or Villan?

Artificial intelligence has already entered higher education. The question is not whether it belongs, but who learns to use it well.

Overview

This presentation grew out of a moment that felt unsettled in a very particular way. Artificial intelligence was already present in the daily practices of students, shaping how they approached writing, research, and problem-solving, while institutional responses were still forming and often inconsistent across courses and departments.

What emerged was not a clear policy landscape, but a lived one. Some students experimented early and developed a working familiarity with these tools through use, iteration, and occasional failure. Others avoided them, either out of caution or because they understood them to be off limits. Over time, those experiences began to diverge in ways that were not immediately visible, but became more pronounced as expectations around productivity and output remained the same.

The difference was subtle at first. It appeared in confidence, in efficiency, in the ability to begin. It accumulated through repeated interaction, through moments where one student had a starting point and another did not. These are not dramatic gaps, but they are persistent ones.

The presentation stayed close to that experience. Rather than asking whether AI is good or bad for education, it considered what happens when a set of tools becomes quietly integrated into student workflows without shared guidance or instruction. Avoidance does not remove these systems from the learning environment. It redistributes how and where learning takes place.

This raises a question that is less theoretical than it first appears. If students are expected to use these tools beyond the university, then preparation cannot remain informal or uneven. It becomes part of the work of teaching, not as endorsement, but as orientation.

Event

Approaching Academia: A Conference on Class and Culture
March 16, 2024
Bowling Green, Ohio

Tags

AI in HigherEd, Educational Equity, Generative AI, Technology Ethics, Teaching and Learning

March 16, 2024 Read more

Presentation

AI in Education Ethics Presentation

Invited Panelist: Student Perspectives on AI

Student Perspectives on AI Panel Discussion

As part of an ongoing initiative on emerging technologies affecting higher education, Bowling Green State University's Center for Faculty Excellence convened a university-wide discussion on how students are experiencing AI in the classroom.

I am honored to be one of 10 students invited to share their expertise.

I spoke about:

What ethical and/or equity concerns do I have about AI use in the classroom?

Right now, one of the biggest concerns I have is that generative AI could unintentionally deepen existing inequalities among students. These tools are spreading quickly, but students are not all approaching them with the same level of familiarity, confidence, or guidance. Some students are experimenting with AI and learning how to use it productively, while others are avoiding it entirely because they are worried about violating academic integrity policies or simply don’t know what the boundaries are. When expectations are unclear, students who already have technological confidence often benefit the most. Another concern is transparency. Generative AI systems can produce answers that sound confident even when they are incomplete or incorrect. Students who are still developing expertise in a subject may not yet have the knowledge needed to evaluate those responses critically. For me, the ethical issue is not simply whether students use AI. The larger question is whether universities are helping students learn how to interact with these systems responsibly and critically, because they are likely to encounter them throughout their academic and professional lives.

What recommendations do I have for faculty as they navigate AI use in the classroom?

One recommendation I would offer is to treat generative AI as something students need to learn about rather than something that simply needs to be prohibited. Students are already encountering these tools, and avoiding the conversation entirely can create more confusion than clarity. Faculty can help by talking openly about what these systems do well, where they fall short, and how students should evaluate the information they generate. That kind of discussion helps students develop judgment rather than simply relying on the tool. Another important step is providing clear guidance about when AI use is acceptable and when it is not. Right now, many students are unsure about the boundaries, and that uncertainty can create anxiety about whether they are using the technology appropriately. More broadly, this moment is an opportunity to help students develop AI literacy—not just technical familiarity with the tools, but the ability to question them, interpret their outputs, and understand how they shape the way information is produced.

How has AI impacted my ability to learn?

Right now, generative AI tools are still very new in higher education, and many of the conversations around them are dominated by concern or suspicion. At the same time, what I’m hearing from students across different programs is a more complicated story. For some students, especially neurodiverse students, these tools can help level aspects of the playing field. Generative AI can assist with organizing ideas, translating complex readings into clearer language, or helping students get unstuck when they are staring at a blank page. In that sense, the technology can function less like an answer machine and more like a form of cognitive scaffolding. That doesn’t mean the tool replaces learning. Students still have to evaluate what the system produces, compare it to course materials, and decide what is useful or inaccurate. The real educational value comes from that interaction; from questioning, refining, and verifying the output. What this moment is revealing is that generative AI may not simply be a productivity tool. For some learners, it changes how they interact with knowledge itself. That raises an important question for universities: how do we design learning environments that recognize both the opportunities and the limits of these systems?

These responses reflect themes I often explore in my work: how emerging technologies reshape trust, learning, and human relationships with intelligent systems.

Audience

Bowling Green State University community members who are interested in the role of artificial intelligence tools (mostly generative AI) at the university. Possibilities, pitfalls, and cautious optimism were the prevailing themes among the panelists.

Event

Student Perspectives on AI Panel Discussion

Center for Faculty Excellence AI Event Series

October 26, 2026

Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green, OH

Tags

AI in Higher Education, Human-Computer Interaction, Technology and Culture

October 26, 2023 Read more

Presentation

Ethics Presentation

Surveillance is a Privacy Issue, Oversurveillance is a Civil Rights Issue

All of This is Temporary: Oversurveillance, Poverty, and the Ethics of Unequal Visibility

The greatest danger of surveillance is not simply that people are watched, but that some people are watched far more than others—and come to accept that visibility as the price of survival.

Overview

This presentation examined how civilian surveillance has become normalized across twenty-first-century society while remaining profoundly unequal in its application. Rather than operating as a neutral technological capability, surveillance functions as a mechanism of social stratification, disproportionately targeting Americans living in poverty and those who depend upon public assistance.

Using examples drawn from public assistance programs, the presentation explored how recipients are often required to submit to invasive monitoring, extensive data collection, and continual oversight as conditions of receiving essential services. These requirements extend beyond administrative accountability to create systems of persistent observation that wealthier citizens are rarely asked to endure.

Surveillance is not distributed equally. Visibility has become another dimension of inequality.

The presentation argued that this unequal application of surveillance technologies raises significant ethical and constitutional concerns. Examining the issue through the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments demonstrates that oversurveillance is more than a question of privacy; it represents a civil rights issue in which technological systems reinforce existing class hierarchies while normalizing unequal treatment before the law.

Rather than viewing surveillance as an isolated technological practice, the presentation situated it within broader systems of governance and social control. When extraordinary levels of monitoring become routine for economically vulnerable populations, surveillance ceases to function merely as administration and instead becomes infrastructure that reproduces generational inequality.

Event

Class Consciousness Conference
Bowling Green, OH
April 15, 2023
Paper Presentation

Tags

Technology Ethics, Surveillance Studies, Privacy, Social Justice, Class Studies, Civil Rights, Presentation

April 15, 2023 Read more

Presentation

Ethics Presentation

Unequal surveillance is a Civil Rights Issue

Oversurveillance, Poverty, and the Constitution

Civilian surveillance has become commonplace, but its burdens are not equally shared. When constant observation becomes a condition of receiving public assistance, surveillance becomes more than administration, it becomes a mechanism of inequality.

Overview

This poster presented an in-progress research project examining the legal and ethical implications of oversurveillance directed toward poor and minoritized communities in the United States. Drawing on Social Conflict Theory and Defiance and Crime Conflict Theory, the project explored how surveillance technologies and administrative oversight disproportionately affect those receiving government financial and health assistance.

Rather than treating surveillance as a neutral tool of public administration, the research argued that it functions as a system of unequal social control. Individuals living in poverty are often required to submit to invasive monitoring, extensive documentation, and continual oversight that wealthier citizens are not expected to endure. These practices normalize unequal treatment while reinforcing existing social and economic inequalities.

When surveillance becomes a condition of receiving assistance, constitutional protections become unevenly distributed.

The project examined this disparity through the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. Framing oversurveillance as both a legal and ethical issue shifts the conversation beyond privacy, highlighting how disproportionate monitoring contributes to generational class inequality and raises fundamental civil rights concerns.

Although presented as work in progress, this research laid the foundation for later scholarship examining how technological systems shape power, autonomy, and human experience.

Event

Eighth Annual Symposium on Diversity
Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH
January 16, 2023
Poster Presentation

Tags

Ethics, Technology Ethics, Surveillance Studies, Civil Rights, Privacy, Presentation

January 16, 2023 Read more

Presentation

Downloads Ethics Human Experience of AI Presentation

Pillow Talk with Sex Robots

Pillow Talk with Sex Robots:

Exploring How Intimacy with Robots Affects Interpersonal Relations

What happens when technologies designed for intimacy begin occupying roles once reserved for other people?

Companion technologies are often discussed in terms of their capabilities. Can they carry on conversations? Can they recognize emotions? Can they simulate affection? Less attention is given to a different question: How does reliance on these systems begin to reshape human relationships?

Overview

This presentation explored the growing intersection between artificial intelligence, intimacy, and interpersonal communication through the emerging phenomenon of AI-enabled sex robots. While public discussion often focused on the technology itself, the presentation shifted attention toward the human relationships surrounding it. Rather than asking what robots could do, it asked how repeated interaction with relational technologies might influence the ways people communicate, form expectations, and navigate relationships with other people.

The analysis drew on research surrounding AI-enabled sex dolls, communication technologies, and studies of human interaction with digital systems. Particular attention was given to work examining individuals who relied on these technologies as substitutes for human companionship. Although the technologies themselves varied, they shared an important characteristic: they were designed to provide predictable, responsive interactions that required far less negotiation than relationships with other people.

This observation connected the discussion to a broader pattern already emerging across communication research. Studies of text messaging, virtual assistants such as Siri and Alexa, gaming avatars, and other forms of human-computer interaction suggested that technologies do more than mediate communication. They also participate in shaping communication habits. As particular forms of interaction become more immediate, more predictable, and easier to rely upon, expectations developed within technological environments may begin carrying over into interpersonal relationships.

Rather than arguing that technology simply replaces human connection, the presentation considered how relational technologies might gradually reshape the skills, expectations, and habits people bring to their interactions with others. The concern was not that people would mistake robots for humans, but that sustained interaction with highly responsive systems might alter expectations about what feels normal within human relationships, where negotiation, unpredictability, and mutual adaptation remain unavoidable.

The presentation ultimately argued that the significance of sex robots extends beyond questions of sexuality or technological innovation. They function as a particularly visible example of a broader cultural shift in which increasingly sophisticated technologies participate in domains of life once understood as fundamentally interpersonal. Studying these systems, therefore, offers an opportunity to better understand how emerging technologies influence communication, intimacy, and the social environments in which human relationships develop.

Event:

43rd Annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association

SWPACA Conference

Albuquerque, NM

February 26, 2022

Tags:

Human Experience of AI, Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Intimacy, Technology and Culture

Editor's Note (2026): This presentation represents an early stage in my research on human relationships with AI. Several ideas introduced here later developed into the concepts explored in Designed Intimacy and In Whose Image? Exploring the Cultural Implications of Sex Robots.

February 26, 2022 Read more