A Philosopher's Case Against Anthropomorphizing AI Systems

AI and Ethics, an open-access philosophy journal, published this paper by Adriana Placani, a philosopher at Nova University of Lisbon's Institute of Philosophy, making the case against talking about AI systems as if they were people.

Placani treats anthropomorphism as two separate problems. As hype, it inflates what AI can actually do: she traces the pattern from Alan Turing describing a machine doing "homework," through a robot's own creator calling it "basically alive" on television, to a tech executive musing that large neural networks might be "slightly conscious." As a fallacy, it distorts moral reasoning about AI - judgments about its character, its moral status, who is responsible for its actions, and whether it can be trusted - because those judgments quietly assume AI has intentions and feelings it does not have.

The argument is philosophical rather than technical: there are no benchmarks or experiments here, just a close reading of how ordinary language about AI, systems that "learn," assistants that are "listening," shapes belief even in readers who think they are being critical. It suits anyone who wants the conceptual case for why "the chatbot seems to care" is a claim worth questioning, more than it suits someone looking for a practical how-to guide.