AI increasingly speaks to us in ways that feel remarkably human. Treating it as a person may change how we trust, question and converse with it, while carrying those habits into our human relationships. This Knowledge Café offers a space to examine these effects together through conversation and shared experience.
Knowledge Café
What Is the Impact of Anthropomorphising AI?
Date: Tuesday, 22nd September 2026
Time: 14:00 to 15:30 GMT+1 (London time)
—it might still work for you if you’re open to an early start or a late night.Host/Speaker: David Gurteen and John Hovell
Location: Online Zoom Event
Price: Free
Introduction
This event is part of a series of online Knowledge Cafés on Conversational Leadership, held on Zoom.
Each Café explores a theme drawn from my online blook on Conversational Leadership.
Ahead of each Café, I may invite you to read one or more related posts from the blook to help prepare for the conversation.
If you’re new to the Knowledge Café concept, please note that this is a participatory event, not a webinar.
Theme: What Is the Impact of Anthropomorphising AI?
In our last Knowledge Café on interthinking with AI, one of the liveliest issues to emerge was the danger of anthropomorphising AI.
Anthropomorphism means attributing human qualities, emotions or intentions to something that is not human. We know that AI does not think or feel as we do, yet it speaks to us in remarkably human ways. It responds warmly, appears interested, offers reassurance and sometimes seems to understand us.
It is hardly surprising that we begin to treat it as if it were a person.
Some people see this as dangerous. If AI sounds caring, confident and intelligent, we may trust it too readily, become emotionally attached to it or forget that its responses are generated by technology rather than grounded in human experience. Its apparent warmth may conceal errors, flattery or manipulation.
Others argue that some degree of anthropomorphism is natural and may even be helpful. Treating AI as a conversational partner can make it easier to explore ideas, ask questions and think aloud. The conversation may feel more open and productive precisely because we respond to the AI socially.
Even something as simple as politeness raises difficult questions. If AI has no feelings, does it matter whether we are rude to it? Perhaps not to the AI. But might repeatedly speaking rudely to an apparently human presence begin to change us? Could the conversational habits we develop with AI carry over into our conversations with real people?
The broader issue is the impact anthropomorphising AI may have on us. In this Café, however, our particular focus will be on conversation. How does treating AI as human affect the way we speak to it, listen to it and respond to what it says? How might it influence our expectations of conversation and, ultimately, the way we converse with one another?
This is not a session about prompt engineering, AI tools or the latest technology. It is about conversation, human behaviour and the changing relationship between people and AI.
As always, this will be a Knowledge Café rather than a webinar. There will be no lengthy sleep-inducing presentations and no experts providing answers. Instead, we will explore these questions together, drawing on our own experiences and perspectives.
Whether you routinely say please and thank you to AI, regard it simply as a tool, or find yourself somewhere in between, I hope you will join us for another lively and thought-provoking conversation.
The question for our conversation will be: What Is the Impact of Anthropomorphising AI?
John and I will discuss the Café’s theme and pose a question to initiate the conversation. We will also ask ChatGPT to say a few words. Then, in Café style, we will divide into small groups for three rounds of discussion, followed by a whole-group conversation.
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Event: What Is the Impact of Anthropomorphising AI? Tuesday 22nd September 2026 14:00 to 15:30 GMT+1 (London time) - AI increasingly speaks to us in ways that feel remarkably human. Treating it as a person may change how we… The Gurteen Knowledge Letter is a free monthly newsletter with over 20,000 subscribers that I have been publishing by email for over 20 years.
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