Research Suggests a Queer Perspective for Studying Human and AI Relationships

A new study proposes the so-called queering as a method to examine the complex intertwining of humans and artificial intelligence. The idea is to diversify the concept of self and resist the way AI systems force people into certain predetermined categories.

Traditionally, the queer concept has been associated with gender and sexuality. In this work, it is expanded to describe relational, performative, and political disruption: a way to destabilize AI's "addressing," how systems recognize and classify people. Researchers see queering as a means to break these normative algorithmic logics.

The approach is developed through artistic and theoretical experimentation, called Undoing Gracia. The experiment is based on the first author's own memories and values. In the speculative Gracia-world created from these, a character named Grace interacts with two digital doppelgängers, Lex and Tortuga.

These digital doppelgängers form a multi-agent simulation that explores the "algorithmic borderlands" of subjectivity, or the experienced self, an area between human and AI where self-image is shaped. The self does not appear as a ready-made core but is continuously presented and transformed together with AI agents.

The research connects human-computer interaction, queer theory, and critical examination of AI systems. It offers a conceptual tool to understand how AI not only deduces things about us but also participates in how we perceive ourselves—and how this process can be disrupted and diversified.

Source: Undoing Gracia: queering the self in the algorithmic borderlands, AI & SOCIETY.