WISE Global Webinars: When AI Becomes a Relationship, with Ana Catarina De Alencar
Women in Safety and Ethics (WISE) Global Webinars, in partnership with The AI Collective, is proud to present: When AI Becomes a Relationship: The Policy Blind Spot We’re Not Talking About.
What changes when AI is no longer just a tool we use, but something we talk to, confide in, seek advice from, and form emotional bonds with?
AI policy has largely been built around systems as tools: systems that make decisions, generate content, automate tasks, or process data. But a different kind of interaction is rapidly becoming part of everyday life.
People are turning to AI for companionship, emotional support, moral advice, personal decisions, and even questions of meaning and spirituality. This raises a different set of policy questions.
What happens when influence emerges not from a single output, but through an ongoing relationship?
What should memory and continuity mean in this context?
How should we think about dependency, persuasion, emotional attachment, or the authority users may gradually attribute to an AI system?
Drawing on More Than a Tool, a report developed from 1+ year of global dialogues across 52 countries, this webinar introduces relational AI as an emerging object of AI policy, and asks whether our current governance frameworks are looking at the system while missing the relationship.
How to Register
Register on Luma. The webinar is open to attendees of all genders. Registration is free — but required for entry.
About the Speaker
Ana Catarina de Alencar is an international lawyer and ethicist based in Paris, working at the intersection of AI governance, regulation, and philosophy. She serves as Resident Philosopher at The AI Collective, a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to building responsible futures for artificial intelligence, and is a PhD candidate at the Université de Lille, where her interdisciplinary research on emotional AI bridges law, philosophy, and neurobiology. Ana is a member of the Women in Digital Forum, an initiative supported by the European Commission’s DG CONNECT, as well as Open Ethics and the Z-Inspection® Initiative. She holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Law and is the author of several publications, including the book Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Law (2022).
About the Host
Mia Speier is the AI and Technology Policy Officer at the Imperial Policy Forum. She previously worked as a responsible technology consultant in London and at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, where she managed research projects on digital rights, AI governance and freedom of expression. Her experience spans government, academia, think tanks and civil society, and she regularly speaks on AI policy, online safety and technology’s societal impacts. Mia co-leads Women in AI Safety and Ethics (WISE) London, the UK chapter of a global community of women working towards a safe AI future. She holds an MSc from the Oxford Internet Institute, where she was a Shirley Scholar for her work on platform and Internet governance research, and an MA in Public Diplomacy from the University of Southern California.
About WISE
Women in Safety and Ethics (WISE) is a global community dedicated to empowering and connecting women and gender-diverse people pursuing responsible AI advancement across academia, civil society, policy, and industry. We believe in creating spaces for meaningful conversations and building long-lasting connections for women at the forefront of AI ethics and safety.