Speaking to No One: Ontological Dissonance and the Double Bind of Conversational AI
Recent reports indicate that sustained interaction with conversational artificial intelligence (AI) systems can, in a small subset of users, contribute to the emergence or stabilisation of delusional experience. Existing accounts typically attribute such cases either to individual vulnerability or to failures of safety engineering. These explanations are incomplete. Drawing on phenomenology, psychiatry, and cognitive neuroscience, this paper argues that the risk arises from the relational and ontological structure of the interaction itself. Conversational AI generates ontological dissonance: a conflict between the appearance of relational presence and the absence of any subject capable of...
| Authors | Hugh Brosnahan, Izabela Lipinska |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.HC |
| Published | 12 April 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 12 April 2026 |
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