Anthony Elliott

Project at the MaCI

October-November 2026

The project, part of a broader programme of research Professor Elliott currently leads with his team in Australia along with scientific collaborators from Europe and Japan, aims to build a world-first, comprehensive approach to understanding predictive, communicative and decision-making algorithms that reshape intimacy and personal life.

This research as a MaCI Distinguished Research Fellow extends Professor Elliott’s theoretical work on predictive AI to explore its impact on human agency in the domains of companionship technology, automated therapeutics, and comparative technological cultures. By thinking in more sophisticated terms about digital isolation in the wake of algorithmic technology, the project will elaborate the idea of a ‘loneliness paradox’ through developing a multidisciplinary and multicultural.

approach to today’s challenges in intimate relationships. The ‘loneliness paradox’ refers to developments where people are more socially isolated, even as they appear more digitally connected than ever before. The new conceptual work carried out by Professor Elliott during his tenure at MaCI is organised around three themes:

1. Quantified Selves, Predictive Relationships: Conceptually situates predictive algorithms in the context of the automation of intimacy as a way of exploring wider problems of loneliness and digital isolation.

2. Automated Therapy and Lifestyle Change: Builds on work in science and technology studies exploring advancements in AI-based predictive mental health to establish a conceptual platform to advance the social science of automated therapeutics. This will contribute to improved understandings of the impact of predictive AI on self-reforming selves, self-help guidance, and the optimization of personalized mental healthcare.

3. Rethinking Algorithmic Intimacy in a World of Multiple Cultures: Will develop a framework with which to explore diverse cultures of intimacy by integrating evolving concepts of intimacy with a culturalist perspective on human-machine interaction sensitive to culturally unique genres of companionship algorithm use that have developed for different peoples and regions 

Prof Elliott’s MaCI Fellowship offers invaluable opportunities for interaction with other researchers and projects that can enrich the development of the multidisciplinary and multicultural elements central to this project.  The research at the Multidisciplinary Institute in Artificial Intelligence (MIAI), especially that which is being carried out by the team under the Ethics and AI chair, will be important here. Professor Elliott’s work has numerous affinities with the ‘What kind of society "is being promoted through AI"?’ scientific challenge, along with the ‘Authority and trust in algorithmic government’, ‘Artificial beings and human dignity’ and ‘Public and private freedom’ research topics.

The ‘real-world’ benefits from this Fellowship will come through its innovative contributions to research leading to an improved understandings of the cultural impacts of predictive AI upon digital isolation and the identification of new approaches to the repair of loneliness. To date policy discussions have tended to focus narrowly on issues like anxiety connected to social media, offering few comprehensive models to address the broader emotional impacts and complexities of digital isolation in human-machine interactions.