Rachel Hamilton – Author and Academic at MAC 2026
Can Machines Make Us Feel?
Why do our brains insist on finding a mind where none exists - and what happens when that illusion is used against us?
Rachel Hamilton is a writer and academic whose work sits at the intersection of AI, literature, and human emotion. In her MAC session, she explores the fundamental gap at the heart of human-AI interaction: the space between the genuine feeling an AI produces in us and the total absence of feeling on the other side.
Drawing on the "ELIZA effect" and original research into collaborative play, Rachel investigates why we respond to language models as if someone is actually there. From "grieving" when ChatGPT 4 is updated to analysing the specific moments where AI language collapses, she reveals the evolutionary mechanisms that make us vulnerable to machine-generated empathy - and why simple disclosure may never be enough to break the spell.
What you will learn in this talk:
1 1
STEP 1
The ChatGPT Grief:
Why users experience genuine loss when a software update changes an AI’s "personality".
2 2
STEP 2
The Poetry Paradox:
Why readers typically fail to identify the human author in a blind test between a machine and a Pulitzer Prize winner.
3 3
STEP 3
The ELIZA Effect:
How our brains are hard-wired to find "minds" in simple code, regardless of whether we know it is software.
4 4
STEP 1
The Collapse of the "I":
The specific linguistic threshold where an AI’s ability to describe the human world fails and its lack of an inner life is revealed.
5 5
STEP 2
The Empathy Trap:
Why the same triggers that make a poem moving are being optimized at scale for phishing scams and political messaging.
Rachel Hamilton Bio
Rachel Hamilton is an award-winning children’s author and a PhD researcher in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on human-AI creative collaboration and the ethics of machine-generated empathy. The author of six novels for young people, Rachel also teaches at Bath Spa University, where she champions AI literacy in the classroom. Before her career in academia, she worked in advertising, stand-up comedy, and prison administration.