Elliott Anthony (2023) Algorithmic Intimacy. The Digital Revolution in Personal Relationships

Abstract

Algorithmic Intimacy, as Anthony Elliott claims, is not another contribution to the “soaring studies of the AI revolution” (2023: 1). Admittedly, this initial confession somehow strikes a chord as it has become increasingly difficult to keep track of such a prominent theme in the social sciences. A wide range of work in fields such as science and technology studies, sociology, political sciences, or communication studies now deals with the dangers, risks, benefits, or opportunities of different phenomena often subsumed under AI. The increasing attention to machine learning technologies in our everyday lives is not surprising—given the massive investments in AI by international corporations or the design of entire national strategies in which states project AI to build geopolitical futures (Bareis and Katzenbach, 2022). The difficulty of AI in public discourse lies in the combination of fuzziness, overuse, and its presumed technological power, which often clouds this notion with mystery or fear. The “Digital Revolution” is brimming with buzzwords; AI has long become its most prominent one. Algorithmic Intimacy carefully avoids any mysteries, but neither does it downplay the transformative potential of machine learning technologies. The book describes the recent proliferation of automated and predictive algorithms that mediate our intimate ways of being with others. It aims to carve out elements for a critical social theory of intimacy in our digitized life. How are social bonds and interactions experienced and negotiated in the human-machine interfaces that connect people? How do algorithmic technologies shape our longing or desires to build ties to and with others? It is a reasonable starting point to explore these questions with the book’s somewhat counterintuitive title—Algorithmic Intimacy, which challenges some common assumptions about the nature of algorithms and human togetherness. While social intimacy seems to evoke physical proximity, personal experience, and emotional encounters, algorithms, by contrast, appear concealed or invisible, virtual, and mechanistic. What are the implications of considering intimate social relationships “in the face of machine-learning predictive algorithms and the emergent variety of intimate connections modeled in the image of computational code” (Elliott, 2023: 12)? The book begins with two conceptually oriented chapters that lay out how algorithmic technology and automated platforms are transforming what sociologists once identified as the social cornerstones of intimate life: face-toface interaction, lasting togetherness, profound knowledge of one another, sometimes also confidentiality. Elliott then proceeds by examining three main domains in which intimacy is algorithmically reconfigured and which form the book’s main structure: “Relationship Tech,” “Therapy Tech,” and “Friendship Tech.” Each chapter presents several examples of how technological products shape the intimate feelings of togetherness and connection: erotic engineering app claiming to match suitable dates or optimize sexual activity;