Rosalie Waelen

The omnipresence of AI in contemporary life is radically changing how people relate to their surroundings, to their loved ones, to their jobs and colleagues, and to their own identity and abilities. This is not only of ethical and societal importance, it also fundamentally changes the meaning and experience of being human. Developers, designers, and policy-makers are not the only ones who can benefit from philosophical insights and recommendations, individual users could also use some assistance in navigating this absurd age of digitalization and automation.

I recently wrote an editorial commentary for the journal Philosophy & Technology, titled “Existentialists Wanted: Philosophy of AI Beyond Ethics”. In this commentary, I call for more research on the existential dimensions of the age of AI. I propose developing an existentialist philosophy of AI, that draws from the European tradition of existentialism.

The ethics paradigm

The majority of philosophers writing about AI focus on questions related to the philosophical domains of moral philosophy and applied ethics. Recent years have shown an immense upsurge in scholarship on ‘AI ethics’, ‘AI safety’, ‘responsible AI’, ‘sustainable AI’, and so on. Researchers have heavily debated how AI and other emerging technologies should be designed, what their impact might be on values like privacy and fairness, how digitalization affects democracy, whether algorithmic processes can be explainable or trustworthy, if AI could be a moral agent or moral patient, and more.

Even those who are interested in other types of questions – for instance related to philosophy of mind, epistemology, or ontology – tend to frame their philosophical analyses of AI in reference to the potential ethical and societal implications of modern technology. In other words, philosophy of AI currently takes place within the dominating paradigm of AI ethics. Although there are exceptions, the general trend is that philosophical research on AI is perceived as relevant – for publication, for funding, for education – only if it ultimately serves a moral purpose.

Human-AI relations

The AI ethics paradigm strongly shapes debates about human-AI relations and human-robot relations. Interactive robots and AI systems can simulate, complement or replace the kind of sophisticated interaction and connection that humans could previously only experience with other humans. Due to advances in human-computer interaction, AI-based chatbots or robots can take on the roles of human caregivers, friends, therapists, romantic partners, or even the deceased. Much has been written about this topic in recent years, but mostly from the perspective of ethics. Beyond typical ethical concerns like privacy and transparency, even discussions about relational autonomy and the intersubjective formation of the self are framed as serving ethics.

There is no doubt that it is important to consider AI’s ethical and political implications. But as philosophers, we should also consider – for its own sake – how AI affects what it means to be human, how we experience life in a world with AI, and how we find purpose and shape our trajectories. The tradition of existentialism seems to be an obvious and suitable source for philosophers interested in the many existential dimensions of AI use. Yet, so far only a handful of contemporary philosophers of technology have drawn from the rich tradition of existentialist thought.

AI existentialism

Take the example of so-called ‘deadbots’ or ‘griefbots’. Based on someone’s chat history or other available data, chatbots can be trained to communicate in the style of a deceased loved one. This AI application allows people to communicate with partners, friends, or family members, who have passed away. Through the lens of existentialism, we come to see how deadbots fundamentally change the experience of intimate relations.

According to Heidegger, life is fundamentally shaped by the prospect of death. Precisely because our existence has a temporal dimension, we can ascribe meaning to our experiences. By extending intimate intersubjective relations like friendships and family bonds beyond death, AI eliminates the natural endpoint and alters the temporal dimension of our intimate relations. The lack of a temporal dimension will not only change our relation to the dead, but likely also our relation to the living. While our loved ones are still alive, we might feel less pressure to spend our free time with them or to have deep and intimate conversations. After all, now that we can make use of deadbots, the options of spending time together and asking big questions, will be available to us endlessly. Sitting on our partner’s deathbed, we might ascribe less weight to the last words they utter and cease to feel like we have to honor their last wishes during a funeral – because we no longer experience these moments as goodbyes. Things will still change when someone dies, and of course this can sadden us. But a relationship will no longer end with death.

Applying existentialist concept and insights to a contemporary context, an existentialist philosophy of AI would ask how we experience “das Man” and the gaze of the other today, what it means to fall in love in a world with dating apps, how AI changes the temporality of our experiences, how to live authentically, what it entails to pursue freedom, and more.

Interested? You can find the full article here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-026-01113-5