Humanist in the loop (1/2) - beware “cynical” anthropomorphizing from AI vendors, warns tech guru Kate O’ Neill

AI companies have overwhelming incentives to anthropomorphize their products and persuade users that chatbots are conscious, sentient, and capable of rational thought and feelings. But those incentives are largely commercial, and the debate about AIs’ supposed superintelligence is a deliberate distraction from their real-world human impacts and harms.

That’s the view of New York-based author, humanist, and tech consultant Kate O’Neill, whose December 2025 TEDx talk urged users never to leave the quest for meaning up to machines – a theme echoed by fellow writer Dave Eggers, who observed in a Guardian interview last month:

Once you have a machine think and write for you, you’re cooked as a species.

I was trepidatious about the opportunity to interview O’Neill, not because she is an insightful, coherent, and forceful speaker – that’s a plus – but simply because I was worried that we would agree with each other. The...

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