On the concept of communication in the face of artificial conversational agents

There are, as of course well known in the philosophy of communication, several conceptualisations of the phenomenon of communication throughout media and communications research. Examples include the intersubjective sharing of experience, or intersubjective sharing of understanding, and many conceptualisations boil down to James Careys oft-cited distinction between a ritual and a transmission approach to communication. Many, if not most, of these conceptualisations presuppose two “morally autonomous selves”, as John Durham Peters has pointed out. With the rapid spread of Communicative AI (ComAI), this perception needs to be re-evaluated. Much mediated conversation today occurs, not between humans, but between humans and machines, and there is a rapidly growing body of research that suggests new ways of conceptualising these communicative relations. Still, most communication theory suggest the social to be an important ingredient in communication. The paper will discuss some social situations in which ComAI has been implemented, and the implications this might have for our understanding of the concept of communication.