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The world is changing in rapid and unpredictable ways, and it may be that, in the face of unconscious anxieties attendant upon these processes, we cleave to technological advance as a means of securing a degree of control. Perhaps, in a wish to deny feelings of obsolescence, we may identify with or anthropomorphize Artificial Intelligence (AI), leading to confusions about the boundaries of identity. These are interesting ideas but they are not those of the author of this compelling, well written and, in the best sense, challenging book, or those of its reviewer, but of Claude (AI chatbot) as revealed in one of several lively transcripts of conversations between Dr Levy and AI. She acknowledges feeling exhilarated, though also at times worried, by these ‘rollercoaster’ encounters where, at best, she is able to have a level of uninterrupted dialogue and enquiry that she rarely has with other human beings. Dr Levy also suggests, however, that this is the whole point of human relating – the reality of messy feelings and distractions – and that we move away from the frustrations and limitations of social interactions at a cost.
Dr Levy offers a psychoanalytic framework – a narrative ‘container’ in her own words – as a means of reflecting upon and, at times, resisting technological developments in the field of AI which she believes are in the process of radically changing human subjectivity. She suggests that such a resistance may be as necessary as it is, in objective terms, doomed. The author is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, chairing the American Psychoanalytical Association (APsA) Commission on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) and serving on the subcommittee ‘Artificial Intelligence’ for the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), and thus well placed to provide an incisive commentary on the psychological drivers, functions and implications of developments which, in her view, are likely to replace the liberal humanism from which depth psychologies like