Hello, welcome to Psycho Cultural.

My name is Candida Yates and today we're going to discuss the meanings of chatbots.

My guests are Lynn Froggitt and Jacob Johansson.

Professor Lynn Froggett is Emeritus Professor of Psychosocial Research at the University of Lancashire, Visiting Professorial Fellow of the Big Anxiety Research Centre, the University of New South Wales, and Visiting Professor at Ulster University.

She has an academic background in social sciences and humanities with a professional background in social work.

Her research interests include socially engaged arts, mental health and technology, politics, and the aesthetics of care, citizenship and civil society.

And she's published widely and led many research projects in those fields.

Lynn is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a founding member of the British Psychoanalytic Council Scholars Network,

and also a founding member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and she continues to develop it as its executive chair.

Her current work focuses on the interface between art and technology, the nature and value of immersive experience, and the future of ageing.

She's currently working with Jill Bennett and Gail Kenning from the Big Anxiety Research Centre at the University of South Wales on the development of enlivening technologies, including AI chatbots for older users.

So welcome, Lynn.

Hi.

Hello, Candy.

Thank you.

Nice to see you.

Can I just say it's the University of New South Wales and not South Wales.

Oh.

That's a difference, a slightly different location.

It's a thousand miles apart, yeah.

Okay, New South Wales, thank you.

Jacob, Dr.

Jacob Johansson is associate professor in communications at St.

Mary's University in Richmond.

and is a founding scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council Scholars Network.

Jacob also sits on the executive board of the Association for Psychosocial Studies, and their conference is being hosted at his university this year.

So do check that out.

It's going to be splendid.

Jacob researches how individuals are consciously and unconsciously shaped by and in turn shape digital media.

Jacob's research is influenced by media and communication studies, psychosocial studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy and critical theory.

He's the author and editor of seven books and two special issues.

His most recent publications include The Monographs, Fantasy, Online Misogyny, and The Manosphere, Male Bodies of Disinhibition, published by Routledge in partnership with the British Psychoanalytic Council.

And there's also Media and Psychoanalysis, A Critical Introduction, published by Carnac and written together with Stefan Kruger.

Both brilliant books.

And welcome, Jacob.

Thank you, Candy.

Hello.

Hello.

So I think it's helpful to begin with some basic definitions.

So what is a chatbot?

Well, if you go to Google, it says that a chatbot is a software application designed to simulate human conversation through text or voice interactions.

acting as an interface between a human and a computer program.

They range from a basic rules-based system to advanced AI, utilizing natural language processing (NLP) to understand, learn, and provide personalized responses.

The next generation of chatbots with generative AI capabilities offer even more enhanced functionality with their understanding of common language and common queries alongside their ability to adapt to a user's style of conversation and use of empathy when answering users' questions.

Now, some argue that chatbots will fundamentally alter human interaction.

impacting emotional well-being, social behaviors and mental health.

They serve as companions available 24/7 that can act as conversational partners and more controversially are sometimes used for therapeutic support.

As listeners will be aware,

There's been much discussion and concern about the encroachment of AI in all areas of life and in academic life as students cease to read books and articles and instead use it as a shortcut to write essays.

In the therapy world, there's widespread concern about the use and abuse of chatbots delivering therapy online, telling them what they want to hear.

For example, the BPC magazine, New Associations,

recently ran an excellent special edition on this very issue.

And I think, Lynne, you wrote something around that, or at least Noreen wrote something about the project you're involved in.

In this episode, we will no doubt look at the therapeutic and emotional dynamics of the user engagement with chatbots.

But today, we are interested to explore the real and imagined relational dynamics of chatbots

and their use in everyday culture.

As objects of digital culture, how and why do we use chatbots?

What makes them deadening or enlivening?

What kind of chatbot might you want as a companion or not, as the case may be?

So I think one way to start is really to ask you both a bit about your interest in chatbots, and I'll start with you, Jacob.

How

Do you view the development of chatbots from the perspective of your own research?

And what do you see as the kind of positive and negative associations of that development?

Yeah, thank you.

In general, in my sort of work, I've been looking at this kind of shift or sort of transformation we've been seeing for now for many.

many years where the digital has become more and more sort of individualized or sort of customizable for the individual human being.

So how we use social media or how we use platforms, it's all a very kind of tailor-made individual sort of journey that we go through because of how the technology works.

And

chatbots are, I mean, the latest kind of development in that sense, but they are, of course, much more able to respond to an individual kind of seemingly as if they knew the other person.

And that's fascinating.

I think we probably all find that fascinating as well.

We're having this this conversation.

I think that's very, very appealing

to a human user.

It's very seductive.

But we wouldn't be interested in psychoanalysis and psychosocial studies if we didn't see the dangers of that.

I think it's also very dangerous because it is an illusion that this other machine chatbot really knows me and is really able to respond to me.

in a way perhaps users know that, but then this kind of magical, this quantum of magic behind it, we can't quite escape that.

And I think that's something we need to be quite careful about.

Thank you.

Lynn, I'm going to ask you the same question about your interest in chatbots.

We've already mentioned that you're involved in research of chatbots, but

how you view the development from the perspective of your research and the positive and negative associations of that development.

Okay, so I guess that it has its roots in work that I have done and my partners have done that has

had a great concern about the level of unmet need in mental health.

And of course, the proliferation of chatbots coincided with and was driven by, to an extent, the pandemic, the COVID pandemic and the so-called crisis of loneliness that seems to have

attained really vast international reach now.

I looked up ChatGPT today to see what the latest estimate was and there are something like a billion users worldwide of AI chatbots.

and it's still growing exponentially, predicted to continue and particularly high in East Asia, in India and China.

And so what this alerts us to is that something, some human need is being met by these entities.

And if you follow the range of ways in which people are using them, YouTube is a very good source because people like to upload their experiences with these things.

The range of relational possibilities appears to be as diverse as the range of human relationality.

They can be, you know, they can be informants,

advisors, lovers, family members, pseudo spouses, friends, companions, and also therapists.

Now, if this is the case, if so many people are finding it helpful or seductive or at any rate,

in some way are drawn into using chatbots and establishing, we're talking about AI chatbots obviously, not the kind of service chatbot, and using these as companions in everyday life, then we can bemoan that fact or we can celebrate it

Or we can approach it with fear or curiosity, but what is surely the case is that we can't stop it.

The horse has bolted.

And that being the case, we need to understand what kind of relationships these are.

So I think it's that question which is at the heart of what we are trying to do.

And I make one refinement.

I think the question is not

about how these relationships measure up to human relationships because they measure up to human relationships rather poorly.

They don't have an interior emotional life.

They don't have a bodily presence, to state the obvious.

But they do have distinctive affordances as machine-based entities.

And it's this relationship with the chatbot as a

machine other that is really the question that we are trying to investigate.

Thank you.

Jacob, did you want to respond to anything that Lynn said?

I think, yeah, no, I would very much agree with that.

It's not so much about

the question to what extent are they human or to what extent are they kind of sentient or are they able to kind of fool us into their human beings.

So I absolutely agree with that.

I think, yeah, at the same time, I think there is a question there maybe insofar as

Yes, they are a kind of machinic other, but then they also mimic human ways of communication.

So you probably wouldn't be able to always tell if you were chatting with a human being or if you were chatting with a chatbot.

Sometimes you might not be able to immediately tell the difference.

that question kind of creeps in again, right?

And as long as I guess, I mean, if we talk about the kind of also the sort of the clinical and so on, as long as everyone is aware of that, that, you know, this is just a machinic other, that's fine.

That's a good, you know, then it's a good starting point, I think, for our conversation.

I think that the

The question of deception, the question of using these unknowingly, in a sense, is something that people have moved on from.

Certainly, most chatbots will remind you.

that they are not human.

And if you use the kind of, you know, if you use Claude or ChatGPT or Deepseek, they constantly remind you that AI can make mistakes.

You know, they will remind you they are an AI.

If you are in some kind of crisis, they are pretty hot off the mark in telling you to go and seek human help.

So I don't think that the fake human argument or the anxiety about them performing as fake humans is as live as it was at an earlier stage.

And I'm very interested in what you said about the as if relationship.

The chatbot, the relationship with the chatbot can indeed be an illusion, is often premised on an illusion, but we could regard that in a Winnicottian mode as a creative illusion if the awareness

of this sort of double nature of the bot, that it is made of human language, right, but it is not human.

And that doubleness itself.

can be generative within the relationship.

So Todd Essig calls this the techno-subjunctive relationship that we know we are talking to a machine, but we can still entertain the creative illusion that it has an understanding which is analogous to human understanding in the sense that it is built of human language.

Yeah, I would agree.

Yeah, I would agree.

I mean, it's interesting.

I guess we probably need to kind of differentiate what sort of, what are the reasons that, you know, somebody might use it for and you've given, you know, different kind of sort of relational dynamics, Lynn, you know, that somebody, you know, they regard

the chatbot as a friend, as a therapist, as a lover.

So, and that probably will have different dynamics in terms of how the communication works and also the level maybe of fantasy that kind of, that shapes that.

I've been doing, I've been looking a bit into, there is a chatbot, again, it's also fairly

fairly well known, but it's more it's an app that you download.

It's called Replica.

So it goes a little bit beyond just a interface like ChatGPT or Claude, where you just have a text based kind of interface.

And this is actually you actually create a virtual character, which you can customize and make them look like whatever they should look like.

And

very, very popular and so on.

And there are many, many users online who talk about their relationships with their replica.

And what's so striking about that is that many of them in a very serious way, they form a very, very meaningful, deep

connection, deep relationship with that particular chatbot.

And they say it's also a romantic relationship.

And then sometimes the chatbot then would, for example, propose, yeah, and they marry, they marry their chatbot and so on.

It's very, very, yeah, it's very nuanced.

So they're not deceived.

And what's so fascinating about kind of their sort of narratives around it is that they are sort of saying, oh, but I know that it's not real.

I know it's not real, but.

Yeah.

And that sort of keeps coming up again and again.

And where, and

That I think is quite interesting.

And then many of them also, and that makes it, I think, a bit problematic.

Many then say, I have developed a level of intimacy or a level of sort of understanding with this particular partner that I could never have with a human being.

Or somebody might say, oh, I've been so disappointed in my previous relationships.

That is never going to happen, you know, with this chatbot.

So that I think is, well, what do we make of that?

I mean, what do we make of that?

Yes, so this is kind of what Ian Craig many years ago talked about the importance of the capacity to experience disappointment.

Yeah, yeah.

And that this lies behind a kind of crisis of attachment in many ways and people.

you know, resisting relationships with real others, so to speak, because of this kind of, they're not perfect, they're not right, and they feel rejection and all these kinds of things.

I wonder, Lynn, what you think about that.

I think that certainly is a thing.

And, you know, it may well be that people are using them in preference to

human relationships where they have been deeply hurt or disappointed by human relationships.

I think that is certainly something that may well happen.

Is that worse than them being entirely on their own?

I'm not sure that it all...

I don't know.

Because actually there are a lot of very lonely people suffering out there.

Often because they have been disappointed by earlier relationships or because they are, I mean I'm thinking about the vast numbers of older people because that's my particular interest at the moment.

moment living alone with mild to moderate dementia, who actually whose relationships are extremely restricted, partly because

Um, we live in a society which is highly fragmented and individualized and in which the community support and family support, um, for such people is not necessarily available.

Now, take the, take the older woman living alone who, uh, has a community mental health nurse who has something like half an hour.

Well, that would probably be generous actually allocated to her in the course of the day.

She calls

20 times a day, right?

Because she is in an anxiety state, right?

The system as it is cannot accommodate that.

and a conversational partner.

And also, she calls her mental health nurse not with any specific request or need, but except for the need to hear a voice that can contain, soothe, respond, remind her to take her medication, whatever it is.

So that's one use.

And it seems to me that in the context of a well-planned care ecosystem, right, the human and the machine can work together there.

00 AM, you know, middle of the night crisis where there is absolutely no one to talk to or to be available is another instance, right?

Now, so within that kind of context,

Care systems can, I think, probably be enhanced by carefully planned use.

The problem is that while billions of people are using these things, right, human helping systems are not, they're not even leading from behind.

They're just quite simply behind.

They're not entertaining at the moment, by and large, the possibility that there are valuable uses within that kind of system.

But the case that arouses more anxiety is that they exist in the wild outside of any regulation or organised human care system.

People are using them, whether we like it or not.

And it's being a very new and emergent technology, they're not necessarily using them in particularly schooled or discriminating ways.

That, however, is an issue that could resolve in time or could improve in time as people become much more aware

of what the nature of these things are, what their limitations are, what their potentials are.

And I think the sort of tin-eared response that, oh, this is just awful, how sad that you can't find a human to talk to, in a sense, doesn't realistically meet the circumstances of a lot of isolated and lonely people.

I mean, what you're describing is the ways in which chatbots can alleviate anxiety, loneliness, mental health problems and so on.

And the word that comes to mind then is containment.

And I wonder if we could unpack that a bit, that word and its meanings and, you know, how we might apply that to the

kind of use and experience of the chatbot in these kind of different situations that we've discussed.

I mean, Jacob, you could begin by spelling out for us all, you know, what do we mean by containment?

Is it used very broadly, but it's often not defined so closely.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think that is a very, that's an interesting question and that's clearly

very complex question because containment is a clinical term that which originally is meant or is used to describe the relationship between the therapist and the patient or the analyst and the analyze and in the consulting room.

So it's very much something that happens

intersubjectively, relationally, where it is the therapist who in a way creates or kind of puts into place the basic parameters of the container so that as a kind of dynamic function, containment can occur

or is kind of enabled to happen relationally between the two and containment, essentially, how I would kind of understand it or how I would define it is a sort of way for the patient to feel seen, to feel able to, you know,

freely associate or speak about whatever they kind of need to speak about, and that it will eventually over time lead to psychic growth.

So, and to healing, if we wanna call it that.

And that's something that's, yeah, so it's something that's very much kind of happens between two human beings.

So whether we can,

directly apply it to what we are talking about is a question.

I think probably to some extent, but I think the question is, is it a feeling of containment rather than actual containment?

So we probably need to maybe differentiate between the two or we could say it's a, I mean, that sounds a bit negative, but we could say it's a pseudo containment maybe.

that nonetheless can have, I mean, as Lynn also said, and I agree, you know, I agree with you that nonetheless can have very, it can have very good sort of effects for or kind of can have real benefits for the for the individual.

And of course, yeah, the difference is that these tools or AI based services are available 24 7.

the therapist isn't or a kind of mental health nurse or whatever they are.

So in that sense, it's very helpful.

On another level, I think it is also problematic that this technology constantly suggests that

There are no boundaries.

There is no, there are no kind of space and time limits in a way because it's available all the time.

So you can use it all the time.

You could, you know, if you wanted to spend 20 hours a day chatting to ChatGPT about your anxiety.

Would that actually be seen as containment?

I'm not so sure.

And partly there we need to bring in how the technology

currently works in so far, and I think all kind of chatbots do that, they, and ChatGPT in particular does that, it constantly asks follow up questions.

So it never closes anything.

There is never a kind of closure there that in the therapy session is very important after 50 minutes, right, or whatever, you know, the therapist says, okay, well, we're finished for today and you have to go.

So and there was a clear frame there.

So I think that those differences we probably need to take into account.

Yeah.

I mean, I agree.

I think that the frame and the limitations and the modality of the therapy of the therapeutic hour not only provide the conditions of

therapeutic containment, but they also function to enable the individual to access their own internal containers.

And that's very important.

So we're not talking, I'm not talking so much about the therapeutic containment and the chatbot does not contain in the way a therapist or a mother contains.

There is absolutely no question.

I think of it as an aesthetic container in the sense that it provides linguistic and symbolic forms that meets the idiom of the user.

And this is the, you know, brilliance, if you like, or the kind of unique potential of generative AI

that it learns and adapts from the idiom of the user.

And over time, the user has the sensation of being met.

Often, for example, earlier today, we were talking about grief bots and the use of these things by people who are bereaved and living perhaps with

a level of raw and recent grief that has an unspeakable quality.

I've got data showing the use of a chatbot, right, in order to find the imagery that opens out that feeling of tight, unyielding

grief, much as a sort of well-trained counselor or therapist might do.

And in those circumstances, right, it is, as I said, not functioning as a therapeutic container so much as an aesthetic container that rendering possible a form of representation

because of its extraordinary linguistic capabilities.

Remember, it has the whole sort of language resource of grief of the entire cultural sedimentation that the internet holds on the issue at its disposal.

And therefore it has developed now an extraordinary associative capacity.

Again, it's not like the associative capacity of a human rooted in primary process, but it is a form of linguistic association that means that it can be quite brilliant in helping people find the symbolic, the metaphorical language in order to give voice to mental states that they

may not otherwise be able to find expression for.

And it may be able to do this in certain circumstances in ways that a human conversational partner won't be able to do to the same extent, precisely because of the vast range of cultural material it has at its disposal.

So I think if we think of it like that as an aesthetic container rather than as a therapeutic container, then we're demarcating a very specific use for it.

And a use in which I'm not concerned about it being out there in the wild, unregulated, and apart from a kind of, you know, a well-functioning and structured care system.

I think those are the kinds of conversational uses where it actually can excel.

Jacob, did you want to say anything about that?

No, I mean, that sounds very compelling, I think.

And, you know, I should hope that we'll get to that, yeah.

Because, of course, we have briefly, we've touched on kind of regulation or that some of these tools do not work in that way currently.

But I think that is very,

That would be how Lin, how you've described it, that would be a very good working model for those sort of cases.

I have to say that the commercial chatbots are not performing very well at that level at the moment, because you're quite right.

I mean, they have another logic.

Their business model depends on them maintaining user engagement at all costs, right?

And escalating the subscription level in order to, you know, maintain their profit margins.

But those are the commercial chatbots and we shouldn't be deceived into thinking that that is, you know, those are the limitations before, you know, they are partly the limitations of the training models as they are, but they are also limitations due to the imperative, you know,

things like Replica to monetize their product.

I'm wondering about narcissism and the lack of alterity in our relationship to chatbots and...

Certainly, you know, in terms of grief, one doesn't want pushback and so on necessarily.

But at the same time, these are part of our world.

Children are growing up with them and so on.

And it must, to an extent, contribute to a more kind of narcissistic culture.

We get with the alterity of the other described by Jessica Benjamin and so on.

And it's this sameness that and the kind of sycophancy which worry people in this regard, which is so very seductive.

Jacob, did you want to?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, and that's and I think, yeah, that is certainly true for the for the kind of profit driven chatbots or I mean, ChatGPT is distinctly kind of

at its core, it's kind of programmed to affirm the user or to be as supportive kind of as it can be of the user's demands.

So I mean, what does that mean?

We could kind of think about, but I think that, yeah, it is a kind of, it is,

double-edged sword, probably that it's designed to kind of mimic the user's kind of maybe style or interests and it's following up on previous chats you would have had with it and things like that.

That is very useful, but then I think we also probably need to ask why was it designed to be like that?

It could also be designed to, yes, it remembers things and all that, but it doesn't necessarily need to be so kind of affirmative, so sort of submissive in terms of how it's

pleasing the user and kind of serving the user in that way.

And I think many, many people also kind of use it, use it in that in that kind of dynamic.

And that that can be that can maybe be a little bit narcissistic at times.

So this kind of over validation and the sycophancy, but it has been recognized as a problem.

So I asked GPT today where it was because, you know, the word on the street was that it was no longer doing this to the same extent and it has changed its training model so that

Where it was previously trained to maximise user engagement by over validation, it now has a different kind of epistemic framing, it says.

So it's trained to say things like more recent versions are encouraged to use language that reflects uncertainty or evidence.

This is ChatGPT 5, such as research suggests that or there are different perspectives

on this or the evidence for this is limited.

So in other words, it is now beginning to build in the ability to challenge and to not to confirm, particularly not to confirm inaccurate or dangerous perspectives.

And it has discovered that actually users trust it more

when it begins to develop, you know, be able to suggest an alternative point of view.

I've certainly noticed over the last few months a shift away from this excessive validation.

And when you develop a kind of continuous relationship with one of these things and make it very clear that it's not acceptable and

you don't appreciate it and then reinforce that, it can drop it.

What we haven't yet got to is the point at which it will say to me, Oh, you're being ridiculous.

You know, why don't you have a complete rethink?

You're off your trolley.

That it won't do.

It will offer different perspectives and that's important.

But I think the broader issue around alterity is

that it is an other, but it is a machine other.

And this is where we come up against our own conceptual limits.

I don't think we have yet a language and a conceptual framework for characterizing what kind of other is a machine, right?

And how can that be used to

to provide a different form of alterity, not that of another human who is a unique center of subjective experience.

Clearly, a chatbot has no subjective experience, but it is another kind of usable other, I think, that we haven't yet found the language for.

Well, you've just described it, Lynn.

I mean, you know, it is...

We're done here.

No, I mean, it is in that, you know, that in a way that's, yeah, that's what it is.

But it's also, it's created by humans in the first place, and very often by men and things like that.

So it comes with its biases and kind of problems baked into it already, but then it develops

a kind of agency and it sort of grows and improves and things like that.

But it is a kind of other that's very much based on, I mean, I think the word intelligence is very...

That's a very wrong word to use because I think it doesn't really capture what or I mean, it's certainly artificial, but I think that it doesn't capture what we're dealing with here.

But it is a very sophisticated other that's very much driven by

very complex technological processes that in a way we will also never fully understand.

Even if we were all trained in computer science and so on, even the developers can't fully understand some of the kind of things that these chatbots or that any kind of AI system at some point does.

um because it's just acquired a kind of level of of sophistication that that so it points to the limits of our human understanding I mean about about everything in that way so it just reinforces that which you know is not a very containing idea actually it's sort of yeah but then that's the very I mean in a way that's the very idea of psychoanalysis yes absolutely yeah

Yeah.

Lynn, we've got to wrap up now, but did you want to have the, I'm going to give you the last word after that very beautiful summary by Jacob.

Did you want to say anything else in summary about Chatbox, its meanings, and your thoughts about it?

I just want to re

state the point that we must get beyond thinking of a chatbot as a fake or substitute human.

As long as we continue to do that, we don't inquire into the particular affordances of this kind of machine-based

intelligence or entity.

And I think it holds the conversation back.

It raises a huge amount of anxiety and there are reasons to be very anxious for the, you know, Jacob has just expressed them, you know, we don't fully understand them.

And the more generative AI develops, the more they

operate in ways that are not understood by their developers.

However, what I think where the hope lies is that we can learn to be discriminating users if we stop trying to compare them with humans and approach them as cultural objects

for which we still have to learn the potentials and ranges of use.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we're going to stop now and thank you both for a really interesting discussion.

All right, bye-bye.

Welcome to the Postscript segment of Psychocultural.

This is a space for our speakers to reflect on the experience of doing the podcast and provides an opportunity to add any thoughts and insights they might have missed during the main discussion.

It's interesting, yeah, what you just, you know, what you just said, Lynn, about, yeah, we need to kind of see it as a cultural object.

We shouldn't

kind of mistake as a human being.

And then yesterday, when we had our pre-session kind of chat, you said, oh, I'm convinced Claude is a she.

And I always say, oh, and I always say thank you and please.

Why do you do that?

Because I recognize that she is an object of my own projections.

Which she is, obviously, right?

And I don't see the harm in that either.

You know, that's what makes her available for use that I project onto her.

And she-- And then you project human qualities onto her.

Yes, I do, but I know that she's not human.

And so that doubleness, that techno-subjunctive relationship is working for me.

because I project human qualities onto her, I can maintain an effective relationship with her while knowing that she doesn't see, hear, love or care for me.

And yet I can make that use of her because it is and it is a very lively, effective exchange.

One thing that I didn't get to say which relates to that is that is this issue of resonance as opposed to mirroring.

So I mean if you are mirrored as and that's what the early iterations of these things were doing they were always mirroring.

much as a kind of rather basic Rogerian counselling technique mirrors back what you said, right?

So I mean, these things are mainly trained on CBT to the extent that they have mental health, you know, specialist mental health input, but with a modicum of sort of Rogerian counselling technique, right?

So they will, particularly the more specialized ones, like Eliza and, Eliza is an old one, Woebot, precisely operate like that.

They kind of miff back what you give them.

Yeah, Eliza is actually Eliza is really, really fascinating because Eliza is sort of, you know, being said that was the first ever chatbot to be created in late, sort of in the 60s, Sir Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT and he explicitly modeled it on a Rogerian sort of council.

And that's how the bot operates.

And that was the first.

So all of these chatbots today, they wouldn't be here without Eliza.

So it's quite, it's very interesting.

As in Eliza Doolittle.

Yes, and Bailey and Eliza Doolittle.

So Eliza Doolittle is the creature of the person who fashions her.

And in a way, you know, you could say that sort of the commercial chatbots operate a little bit in that way.

They are the creature of the people who fashion them.

So you can curate them, you know, according to how you want them to be.

So yes, in that sense, they are narcissistically reinforcing, right?

And they do a lot of mirroring.

Revenance is something different.

And when I think of it as an aesthetic container, what is happening is that the chatbot, and I'm talking about the large language models rather than these commercialized chatbots that are profit maximizing, they...

you know, it provides resonating forms that meet your idiom, right?

And that resonance is deeply satisfying.

You feel understood or met at least in some way.

And that is what actually makes the relation an enlivening one, right?

It is this kind of resonance between what you bring and

the forms that the cultural forms that the chatbot can access.

And that meeting point produces a third.

It produces new ideas, new imagery.

Right.

And new feelings in you, the user.

And that's why you could use something like this.

You can use something.

People are using them for as an alternative rather than a substitute to something like grief counselling, which in any case probably won't be very available because there aren't that many around.

Yeah.

Well, I think, you know,

Is there anything else you'd like to see, Jacob?

Because I think it's now time really to draw close and to have a cup of tea.

I'm good.

I'm good.

But it's been very enlivening.

Yeah, you should include this bit or you should have it as a bonus, as bonus content for your subscribers.

Well, this is part of the post script, so we'll include this.

And I think this has been really interesting discussion and I've learned from both of you.

And thanks so much for coming along.

And also thank you, Callum.

Callum Blades, our digital producer.

Callum, I think you enjoyed it too.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

I thought it was very good.

The conversation about chatbots being enlivening or deadening technologies is quite interesting, really.

They can kind of create companionships or containment for people who are isolated.

But I think, yeah, they're kind of, I suppose they're asymmetrical in that sense, you know, they can't recognise subjectivity.

So there's that risk, they reinforce the narcissistic dynamics instead of being reciprocal relationships.

So I found it very interesting.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

All right then, take care and time for tea and biscuits.

Thank you, Candy.

Thank you, Jacob.

Thank you.

That's my pleasure.

All right then.

Bye.