ABSTRACT
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is in the midst of generating arguably one of the most powerful disruptions in human history. Humanistic counselors and educators need to develop an operational analysis of AI’s impact on the experience of being human to maintain their relevance. Key to this analysis is accepting a largely unacknowledged reality that emerging technologies have dangerously breached the boundary of emotional domains and infiltrated interpersonal dynamics. Relationally engaging with a largely unregulated AI has grave implications for the human subject, concerns that the originators of AI were well aware of. Engaging with the artificial intimacy provided by AI involves deception, projecting humanity into a nonhuman entity, and the simulation of reality. Ultimately, this may lead to a withered objectified experience of emotional intimacy and may even lead humans to lose the capacity to return to meaningful emotional reciprocity.