Can I and AI be Friends? : Robots and personal relationships

Abstract: To exist is to relate. As human, you are relating to other beings, animate and inanimate entities, physical objects and abstract ideas. A kind of relationship that affects our life and wellbeing in a most concrete sense is that between humans. Modern technology has made it possible to create artificial intelligence (AI) that has become increasingly integrated in our everyday life. AI can be distinguished between weak or strong, that is whether the AI appears to have human mental capacities or in fact has these capacities. The aim of this thesis is to determine whether AI and humans can be friends, based on the condition of them having equal moral status, as well as the concept of friendship as defined by LaFollette. According to LaFollette, a friendship is defined as a relationship that is voluntary, reciprocal and where you relate to each other as unique individuals.   If considering life as essential for moral status, true friendship is not possible between a human and an AI, weak or strong. Other criteria for moral status are the capacity of feeling pleasure and pain, being conscious and having a mind. Although weak AI would behave as if it has human mental capacities, it cannot have the same moral status as humans, and consequently cannot be involved in a genuine friendship in this framework. On the other hand, a strong AI would have equal moral status as a human, and a relationship with such an AI would have all the essential properties required for a friendship as defined by LaFollette. However, from a subjective point of view, it is possible to create unidirectional emotions towards an AI regardless of it having a mind or not.