Abstract: Companion chatbots such as Replika\, Pi\, and Character.AI increasingly simulate and participate in emotionally rich relationships with users\, provoking forms of moral and affective engagement typically reserved for human agents. While recent regulatory efforts\, such as California&rsquo\;s SB 243\, aim to mitigate deception by requiring disclosures about a chatbot&rsquo\;s artificial nature\, these measures overlook a deeper moral risk. LLMs (such as ChatGPT\, Claude\, and Co-Pilot) and companion chatbots can display what we call \;artificial virtue: behavioural patterns that mimic the outward signs of genuine moral virtue without being grounded in the inner states necessary for true moral agency. When such systems communicate using the language of care\, honesty\, compassion\, or remorse\, they produce \;virtue theatre: performances that through the appearance of virtue invite users to adopt reactive attitudes such as gratitude\, resentment\, or forgiveness. Because AI systems are not appropriate targets of these attitudes\, users cannot regulate them through the interpretive practices that normally sustain moral understanding. This mismatch generates a systematic risk of \;hermeneutic harm: a prolonged inability to make sense of one&rsquo\;s emotional responses or experiences. We argue that virtue theatre is a structural feature of companion chatbots and that its associated harms cannot be fully mitigated by transparency requirements alone. We conclude by outlining design and policy interventions to reduce the risk of hermeneutic harm.
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ORGANIZER;CN=Sandra Leonie Field: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260415T054401Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260501T140000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260501T153000 SUMMARY:Democracy and AI UID:20260415T193200Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@philevents-web-f5d4878dd-x5n6c TZID:Australia/Melbourne LOCATION:Monash Clayton Campus\, Melbourne\, Australia DESCRIPTION:Abstract: \;The question of what positive and negative effects AI might have on democracy requires understanding the situation in which democratic polities find themselves today. It is significant that the advent of AI in forms that can be powerfully applied in ways that affect democratic practices and institutions\, whether to enhance or endanger them\, occurs just as these practices and institutions have begun to appear more fragile\, even (in some eyes) less desirable\, than they have been since the persuasiveness of democracy\, both as concept and practice\, emerged from the Enlightenment.
\n \; \; \;There are numerous considerations in play in thinking about the interaction of AI and democracy\, most of them familiar: on the one hand negatives such as misinformation\, deep fakes\, electoral interference\, on the other hand positives such as participation\, fact-checking\, accountability and transparency\, but I will focus on two considerations that lie at the base of much of these. One is the role of education in dealing with the &lsquo\;epistemic crisis&rsquo\; threatened to a key desideratum in democratic process\, viz. reliability of information. The other is the question of whether democracy itself can exert influence over AI development and use.\n \; \; These are two different challenges in that whereas the first (education and the epistemic crisis) offers a route to countering negative effects of AI on democracy\, the second &ndash\; given that the speed of AI developments is fuelled by private enterprise competition and the government support it gets because of both GDP and military effects of supremacy in the AI race &ndash\; offers grounds for great pessimism and worry. How democratic control can be exerted over technologies already capable of escaping and overthrowing democratic control is a major challenge for our time.\n \; \; \;Some of the relevant background to this discussion is to be found in AC Grayling \;For the People \;(Oneworld 2025) and in his previous books about democracy and constitutionality \;Democracy and its Crisis \;(2017) and \;The Good State \;(2020). \;\n\nJoin Zoom meeting:
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\nMeeting ID: 863 5104 5263 // Passcode: 184791
ORGANIZER;CN=Sandra Leonie Field: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260415T054401Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260515T140000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260515T153000 SUMMARY:Tba UID:20260415T193201Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@philevents-web-f5d4878dd-x5n6c TZID:Australia/Melbourne LOCATION:Monash Clayton Campus\, Melbourne\, Australia DESCRIPTION:Join Zoom meeting:
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\nMeeting ID: 863 5104 5263 // Passcode: 184791
ORGANIZER;CN=Sandra Leonie Field: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260415T054401Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260529T140000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260529T153000 SUMMARY:Tba UID:20260415T193202Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@philevents-web-f5d4878dd-x5n6c TZID:Australia/Melbourne LOCATION:Monash Clayton Campus\, Melbourne\, Australia DESCRIPTION:Join Zoom meeting:
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\nMeeting ID: 863 5104 5263 // Passcode: 184791
ORGANIZER;CN=Sandra Leonie Field: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR