Artificial intelligence not only powers our cars, hospitals and courtrooms: predictive algorithms are becoming deeply lodged inside us too. Machine intelligence is learning our private preferences and discreetly shaping our personal behaviour, telling us how to live, who to befriend and who to date.

In Algorithmic Intimacy, Anthony Elliott examines the power of predictive algorithms in reshaping personal relationships today. From Facebook friends and therapy chatbots to dating apps and quantified sex lives, Elliott explores how machine intelligence is working within us, amplifying our desires and steering our personal preferences. He argues that intimate relationships today are threatened not by the digital revolution as such, but by the orientation of various life strategies unthinkingly aligned with automated machine intelligence. Our reliance on algorithmic recommendations, he suggests, reflects a growing emergency in personal agency and human bonds. We need alternatives, innovation and experimentation for the interpersonal, intimate effort of ongoing translation back and forth between the discourses of human and machine intelligence.

Accessible and compelling, this book sheds fresh light on the impact of artificial intelligence on the most intimate aspects of our lives. It will appeal to students in the social sciences and humanities and to a wide range of general readers.

About the Author
Anthony Elliott is Executive Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence and Network at the University of South Australia, where he is Research Professor of Sociology.

Reviews

"Algorithms impact today all aspects of everyday life, and what is most personal in it. Anthony Elliott masterfully shows us what is at stake in this curve of digital life, where our intimate being-with-others is built and transformed."
Massimo Durante, University of Turin

"Anthony Elliott offers intriguing insights into how the algorithms embedded in digital technologies contribute to people's closest relationships. Drawing on popular culture for examples, Elliott's lucid writing and expansive focus help the reader make sense of a rapidly evolving landscape of digitized love, sex and friendship."
Deborah Lupton, UNSW Sydney

"[This book] provides the reader with a distinctly critical understanding of how automation and prediction engage users in personal digital intimacy projects: working on the self, consuming digital relationships, optimizing the psyche... Algorithmic Intimacy is not a simple warning of a dystopian future of out-of-control machine intelligence. Instead, it is about the one-dimen-sionality of today's industrial AI products and their promises of simplicity and conformism in social relationships. It is therefore also an emphatic call to delve deeper into the multiple ways in which algorithms will shape the interior self, create new digital identities, and define our being-with-others."
Science and Technology Studies

"Anthony Elliott's books on the social and cultural consequences of the development of artificial intelligence... form a comprehensive, multidimensional picture of the contemporary digital revolution."
Dariusz Brzezinski, Thesis Eleven

"Algorithmic Intimacy is a wake-up call to consider our own and our children's responses to algorithmic intimacy, its reward-based enchantments, and the data webs it weaves."
Australian Book Review

"Anthony Elliott's Algorithmic Intimacy presents a ground-breaking investigation...Effectively integrating insights from social and cultural theories concerning the digital revolution and seamlessly connecting them with a diverse array of empirical studies on the digitalisation of intimacy, Elliott offers a systematic sociological examination of the artificial dimension of intimate bonds...The book is characterised by its outstanding writing and is essential reading for a wide audience, including students, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers...Elliott's exceptional research has covered a breadth of topics and research in the exploration of the digitalisation of intimacy while maintaining a focus on its connections with politics, economy, and society."
Information, Communication and Society

"Algorithmic Intimacy is an essential work for those interested in understanding how algorithms shape our intimacy and our relationships in the digital world. Anthony Elliott offers a well-researched analysis, providing valuable guidance for understanding the challenges and opportunities that algorithmic intimacy presents in contemporary society... To his credit, Elliott manages to make complex topics accessible to a wide audience... The author strives to use clear language and avoid excessive academic jargon, allowing his message to reach readers effectively."
Public Studies/Estudios Publicos

"brilliantly shows that algorithmic intimacy should be recognized as a theme of special significance that reflects broader shifts in contemporary AI-powered societies. The book will captivate researchers across various fields, including human-machine interactions, interpersonal communication, digital culture-particularly algorithmic culture and critical social theory. Additionally, it will serve as an insightful resource for general readers curious about the ways in which predictive algorithms and intimate bonds are interconnected and the impact of advanced machine intelligence on their day-to-day lives and personal relationships."
International Journal of Communication

Book Information
ISBN 9781509549801
Author Anthony Elliott
Format Hardback
Page Count 220
Imprint Polity Press
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 386g
Dimensions(mm) 218mm * 142mm * 23mm