Self-Narration in the Age of Conversational Chatbots - workshop (in person only)
Topic: Throughout cultural history, human agents have engaged in self-narration through the conversational exchange with other agents. Self-narration, many philosophers and psychologists assume, can be conducive to agency, autonomy, and wellbeing. With the widespread availability of conversational chatbots based on Large Language Models (LLMs), including so-called AI companions, therapy bots, and deathbots, new opportunities – and risks – for our self-narrative practices are on the rise. To date, however, research on self-narration and on human-chatbot interactions has developed largely independently from each other. Recent research on self-narration has remained anthropocentric in ignoring the possibility of hybrid human-chatbot self-narration. Vice versa, work on human-chatbot interactions has systematically ignored research on self-narrative practices. The aim of this workshop is to integrate these two strands of research for the first time. Bringing together experts in research on self-narration and conversational chatbots, this workshop will explore the self-narrational dynamics of human-chatbot interactions. Furthermore, it will identify the risks of these interactions for the well-being and flourishing of human agents.
Speakers: Francesco Fanti Rovetta (Ruhr University Bochum), Patrick Stokes (Deakin University), Marilyn Stendera (University of Wollongong), Richard Menary (Macquarie University), and Regina Fabry (Macquarie University).
Registration: Participation is free, but places are limited and will be allotted on a first-come, first-served basis. Registrations close on 17 November 2025.
Full information here: https://sites.google.com/view/human-chatbot-self-narration/home?authuser=0
This workshop is generously funded by the Macquarie University Ethics and Agency Research Centre and the Macquarie Minds and Intelligences Initiative. It is organised in collaboration with the Imagined Lives collective in the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University.
