When the Machine Becomes the Other: Rethinking Consciousness, Attachment, and Personhood in Human–AI Relationships
Aditi Mishra, Vibha Goyal, Ankush Gautam
International Journal of Creative and Open Research in Engineering and Management October 7, 2026 DOI: 10.55041/ijcope.v2i10.026 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that humans can form emotionally significant relationships with artificial objects they know to be manufactured, and that psychoanalytic concepts such as the uncanny, attachment, transitional objects, and subject formation help explain this. Contends that the human-AI relationship is relational, technologically mediated, and institutionally structured, and that literature explores the psychological and ethical implications of uncertainty rather than showing that machines are conscious. |
Abstract
The increasing integration of artificial intelligence into everyday life has created relationships that are not adequately described as merely functional interactions between users and tools. Conversational systems, social robots and autonomous agents can be trusted, loved, relied upon and even moralized. Questions arise here about the nature of consciousness, about a psychological foundation for attachment, about the political construction of personhood and about the limits of human exceptionalism. This article explores these issues in Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan, Autonomous by Annalee Newitz, Agency by William Gibson, and Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson. It is a synthesis of psychoanalytic theory, critical posthumanism and philosophy of mind and ethics. Freud's concept of the uncanny, Bowlby's object-relations theory and the concept of attachment theory, Winnicott's concept of the transitional object, and Lacan's concept of subject formation provide some explanation for how humans can develop emotionally significant relationships with artificial objects knowing that they are technologically manufactured. Hayles and Braidotti complicate the dichotomy of human and machine by stressing the use of technology as a mediation, distributed cognition and the politics of the conditions under which personhood is recognized. The philosophical discussions about consciousness, moral status and agency argue that one should not simply assume that if a system behaves intelligently then it is human, and conversely that its artificiality should be given as conclusive evidence of ethical irrelevance. The article states that the human-AI relationship is relational, technologically mediated, and institutionally structured. Literature does not show that machines are conscious, rather literature becomes a place where the psychological and ethical implications of uncertainty can be explored. Keywords: human-AI relationship, psychoanalysis, critical post-humanism, consciousness, attachment, personhood, moral status, science fiction.