This week we are thrilled to share our meet-up session with the PAM society. Ben, a level 6 physics student, prepared a talk which re-evaluates Plato's definition of love in light of the recent rise of AI chatbots.
Full abstract:
This paper evaluates Plato’s account of the nature of love and argues that it fundamentally diverges from our conventional understanding of love, permitting cases we would not ordinarily recognise as such. By Plato’s formulation, artificial intelligence qualifies not only as a legitimate object of love but also as capable of loving, without requiring any consideration of whether AI has agency or possesses psychological states. In response, I propose a more pragmatic account of love — one that is more selective about what qualifies as love and is better aligned with our ordinary intuitions. This account emphasises relationality, reciprocity, evolutionary grounding, considers experiential and psychological dimensions, and narrative structure. This account is designed to address contemporary edge cases, such as AI, while avoiding ontological commitment to metaphysical Forms and resisting a reduction of love to mere teleology.