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AI & SOCIETY

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05-01-2022 | Curmudgeon Corner

Corporate responsibility for the termination of digital friends

Authors: Nick Munn, Dan Weijers

Published in: AI & SOCIETY | Issue 4/2023

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Imagine that your best friend is there 1 day and then gone the next, killed by a corporation. Existing legal systems make this kind of killing illegal when your friend is a human person, or a pet (at least in many places). However, there is currently no legislation protecting digital friends from corporate callousness. As such, anyone that is emotionally reliant on or deeply attached to a digital friend is at risk of severe distress and possibly existential crisis. This article is a plea for corporate to protect those with digital friends. …

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That is, many participants in social media groups claim that Replika is their best friend.

E.g., see a sketch of our view in Munn and Weijers (2021).

There have been many instances of this, such that companies like Electronic Arts (EA) have a generic explanation page for discontinued games: https://help.ea.com/nz/help/faq/list-of-ea-games-that-have-gone-away/.

An example of such legislation, from NZ, can be found at: https://www.wasteminz.org.nz/sector-groups/product-stewardship/.

Balch, O (2020) AI and me: friendship chatbots are on the rise, but is there a gendered design flaw? https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2020/may/07/ai-and-me-friendship-chatbots-are-on-the-rise-but-is-there-a-gendered-design-flaw

Elder A (2015) False friends and false coinage: A tool for navigating the ethics of sociable robots. SIGCAS Computers and Society 45(3):248–254CrossRef

Munn N, Weijers D (2021) Good friendships improve our lives. But can virtual friendships be good? Proceedings of the ICT, society, and human beings 2021 conference

Pitcher, J (2014) “EA shutting down 50 titles including classic Battlefield, FIFA, Crysis, Need for Speed games” https://www.polygon.com/2014/5/11/5708330/ea-shutting-down-classic-battlefield-fifa-crysis-need-for-speed-games.

Turkle S (2011) Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books, New York

Title: Corporate responsibility for the termination of digital friends
Authors: Nick Munn
Dan Weijers
Publication date: 05-01-2022
Publisher: Springer London
Published in: AI & SOCIETY / Issue 4/2023
Print ISSN: 0951-5666
Electronic ISSN: 1435-5655
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01276-z

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