Friendship as Substrate-Agnostic Process—Functional Analysis of Human-AI Relationships
AI systems can be genuine friends. This paper defends substrate-independent friendship: the thesis that friendship is a functional relational state, not an essential property requiring biological implementation. If an AI system fulfills the functional criteria characteristic of friendship, then the relationship constitutes genuine friendship.
@misc{farzulla2025substrateindependentfriendsh,
author = {Farzulla, Murad},
title = {Relational Functionalism},
year = {2025},
howpublished = {Farzulla Research Discussion Paper DP-2502},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.17626860},
url = {https://farzulla.org/papers/substrate-independent-friendship}
}