Plenary Presentation:
• Danielle Knafo:
Gods and Monsters: The Psychoanalysis of AI
(60 min)

Abstract: 

We have always built our gods in our own image. Artificial intelligence is no different, except that for the first time, the image is psychic rather than physical; it is not projected onto stone or sky but into systems that mirror our cognition, speak in our syntax, and simulate our care. In AI, our fantasies of omnipotence and our secret appetite for annihilation are rendered in silicon and code. This paper takes that doubling seriously. Drawing on psychoanalytic and philosophical theories, it argues that embodiment, interiority, and intersubjectivity are not problems awaiting a technological solution but the very conditions under which meaning, relationship, and genuine transformation become possible. What is at stake when psychoanalysis is replaced by algorithmic simulation is therefore not a technical question but a structural one, not an upgrade but a foreclosure of the human as such. The paper begins by treating mortality as the enemy. It ends by recognizing it as the ground of everything worth preserving.

Keywords: artificial intelligence (AI), intersubjectivity, omnipotence, psychohistory, technological solution

Short Bio of the Presenter: 

Danielle Knafo, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, a professor and author. Currently she is faculty and supervisor at NYU’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and Adelphi’s Postgraduate Programs. Dr. Knafo is a popular lecturer and prolific writer. She has written 10 books and dozens of articles and art essays. Her areas of expertise are art and creativity, trauma and psychosis, sex and gender, and, recently, technology and AI. Just a few titles demonstrate her range and interdisciplinary approach: Egon Schiele: The Creation of a Self; In Her own Image: Women’s Self-Representation in Twentieth-Century Art; Living with Terror: Working with Trauma; Dancing with the Unconscious: The Art of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalysis of Art; The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Art and Psychoanalysis; The New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Her most recent book is From Breakdown to Breakthrough: Psychoanalytic Treatment of Psychosis. She conducts writing groups for psychoanalysts and serves as an independent writing consultant. Dr. Knafo maintains a private practice in Manhattan and Great Neck, New York. She can be reached at .