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Humanity is cursed with the burden of desire—a force that distinguishes us from other creatures, irreducible to mere biological needs, which can be satisfied. According to Jacques Lacan, humans start desiring as soon as they are subject to language, with a natural tendency to enter the symbolic order. This process is usually simultaneous with the mirror stage, where for the first time a baby observes the ‘self’ as an object, which later in his whole life trying to master and complete this imaginary and distorted view of self (Lacan et al., 2015).
From the moment the baby is subject to symbolic order that manifest itself with language, and a distorted view of self, he no longer only has basic biological needs that can be fulfilled. Rather, the baby starts having desires that are metonymic, desires which do not have a clear object or a goal that would fully satisfy the need or eliminate the lack. These metonymic desires can be love, academic success, or it can be a shoe that you have been meaning to buy. In any case, the person will never be fully satisfied after achieving any of these desires, and start chasing other desires, resulting in a metonym (Lacan et al., 2015).
One example that can be loosely connected to Lacan’s ideas is the chatbot ELIZA. Although not designed to be a Lacanian desire seeking bot like what I have in mind, ELIZA can perfectly represent how metonymic desire look like, with a twist. For example, when it was first introduced as a Rogerian psychotherapist, people would chat with the bot by keep asking for validation that is never received and therefore perfectly displays a person’s unattainable desires. (Wallace, 2018)
Building upon Lacan’s ideas, the bot I want to create is called the Lacanian Robot. It will constantly look for outside validation, will always have a desire, and right when the desire is about to be fulfilled, it will start desiring something other, possibly influenced by what the conversation was about.
References
Lacan, J., Porter, D., & Jacques-Alain Miller. (2015). The ethics of psychoanalysis, 1959-1960. Routledge.
Wallace, M. (2018). Eliza, a chatbot therapist. Njit.edu. https://web.njit.edu/~ronkowit/eliza.html
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