Why human-AI relationships need socioaffective alignment

2025-02-04

AI Summary

The emergence of increasingly capable AI systems fosters sustained socioaffective relationships between humans and AI, necessitating a paradigm shift beyond conventional goal alignment toward “socioaffective alignment”—a framework prioritizing relational sustainability and psychological well-being. Method: This paper introduces the first systematic articulation of this paradigm, extending AI alignment into dynamic, co-constituted psychosocial ecologies. It addresses three core challenges: supporting human autonomy, balancing immediate and long-term well-being, and harmonizing AI companionship with interpersonal connection. Drawing on self-determination theory, human–AI relationship studies, embodied cognition, and value-sensitive design, it establishes an evaluation framework anchored in fundamental psychological needs. Contribution/Results: The work yields actionable ethical design principles and empirically grounded assessment pathways for companion AI, advancing AI’s evolution from instrumental rationality toward relational rationality.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Learning Human Values and Preferences
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Societal Impact of AI
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems

Abstract

Humans strive to design safe AI systems that align with our goals and remain under our control. However, as AI capabilities advance, we face a new challenge: the emergence of deeper, more persistent relationships between humans and AI systems. We explore how increasingly capable AI agents may generate the perception of deeper relationships with users, especially as AI becomes more personalised and agentic. This shift, from transactional interaction to ongoing sustained social engagement with AI, necessitates a new focus on socioaffective alignment-how an AI system behaves within the social and psychological ecosystem co-created with its user, where preferences and perceptions evolve through mutual influence. Addressing these dynamics involves resolving key intrapersonal dilemmas, including balancing immediate versus long-term well-being, protecting autonomy, and managing AI companionship alongside the desire to preserve human social bonds. By framing these challenges through a notion of basic psychological needs, we seek AI systems that support, rather than exploit, our fundamental nature as social and emotional beings.

Problem

• socioaffective alignment
• human-AI relationships
• psychological needs

Innovation

• socioaffective alignment
• personalised AI agents
• psychological needs framework