They see a god,I see a human: A critical humanist perspective on automation and intimacy

Abstract

AI industry leaders are racing to automate intimacy. Promising companions that solve loneliness and simulate desire and human connection, either these systems are celebrated as near-divine solutions to existential suffering, or those who use them are pathologised. This commentary intervenes in both positions. Drawing on the tradition of audience studies and Ken Plummer’s critical humanism, I argue that automated intimacy should be understood neither as a technological solution nor as a pathology, but as a field of social, affective, and economic struggle shaped by relations of power. Against the myth-making of Silicon Valley and the psychologising tendencies of much academic debate, I propose a radical contextualism that foregrounds the plural, situated ways real people navigate AI-mediated intimate life. Centring lived human experience in its ambivalence and creative resistance is itself a political act.