You Will Fall in Love with a Machine: Faith in the Face of Technological Singularity  is an essay on bioethics and the philosophy of technology, published in 2025 by Ediciones Rialp. At 302 pages, the work fully engages with the debate on postmodern love and underscores the growing role that  artificial intelligence  is destined to play in romantic relationships.

The book’s title is deliberately provocative and functions as a preemptive thesis: falling in love with a machine no longer belongs exclusively to the realm of science fiction, but rather constitutes a plausible horizon for which numerous pieces of evidence are beginning to emerge. The author refers, among other things, to increasingly widespread practices among young people, who turn to artificial intelligence systems to consult about relationship problems, vent their emotions, or seek emotional guidance where they previously turned to friends, family, pastors, psychologists, or other flesh-and-blood role models. Added to this are even more unsettling phenomena, such as the creation of personalized chatbots based on the data of deceased loved ones, with which they attempt to artificially prolong the emotional bond. These examples are not presented as isolated eccentricities, but as early symptoms of a deeper transformation in the ways we relate and grieve, which reinforces the book’s central thesis: that “machine love” is beginning to take shape as a culturally normalized possibility. The subtitle,  Faith in the Face of Technological Singularity , makes explicit the framework from which the issue is addressed: an ethical reflection that incorporates the Christian tradition, but without reducing itself to a confessional or apologetic discourse.

The work is structured in nine chapters organized into three sections, following a method the author himself defines as an “ascending spiral.” The first section analyzes how technological advances over the last three decades are transforming not only the classical paradigm of medicine but also the very concept of health. According to the author, this concept is undergoing, on the one hand, an expansive process, as it colonizes the very ideal of happiness; and, on the other hand, a reductive movement, whereby the experimental and quantifiable approach comes to monopolize the understanding of health and disease. This implosive-explosive dynamic has as its main consequence the medicalization of the human condition: a phenomenon by which medicine comes to be perceived as the preferred way to address any type of problem, including those of an emotional and spiritual nature.

A second consequence of this implosive-explosive movement—Echarte continues—has to do with the blurring of the lines between the therapeutic and non-therapeutic uses of biotechnology, as well as with the growing centrality of bioenhancement projects. Technological advances are opening up horizons of possibility in which, through drugs, prostheses, surgical interventions, and, more recently, artificial intelligence systems, human beings seem more capable of optimizing their physical, intellectual, emotional, and even moral abilities. And although the ethical controversies associated with these types of interventions are not new, they have never before acquired comparable relevance, precisely because of their increasing technical feasibility. Finally, this expansion of technological power coincides, as in a kind of perfect storm, with the epidemic of loneliness affecting the societies of the so-called First World, rich in knowledge, freedoms, and resources, and, at the same time, profoundly individualistic. It becomes inevitable that technology will once again act as a lifeline against this lack of communication among hyperconnected masses—yes, but only for trivial matters.

The second section is dedicated to examining the  posthumanist and transhumanist movements . According to Echarte, the social changes associated with the trends of medicalizing love and the cybernetic enhancement of romantic life cannot be explained solely by technological advancements, but also respond to certain currents of thought that act as ideological catalysts for these transformations.

The technocratic drift has its roots further back in time than one might expect: it began—Echarte argues—with an Enlightenment rationalism oriented toward the progressive technologization of reason, continued with post-Romantic nihilism that technologized affectivity, and culminated in critical theory, where the will itself becomes an object of technical intervention. In this light, “machine love” does not appear as an extravagance, but as the most advanced paradigm, the ultimate consequence of a process that began more than three centuries ago. Finally, in this same section, the author examines the main critical responses to this final stage, focusing particularly on those developed from Christian humanism. Echarte uses this dialogue of positions to shed light on the practical self-understanding of the modern individual in highly technological contexts, a framework in which the concept of “biotechnological autonomism” acquires particular relevance: the tendency to reduce practical judgment—also in matters of the heart—to objectifying algorithms. The author issues another warning here: new technological devices for affective use, despite presenting themselves as new instruments of emancipation—heralds of a supposed new era of liberation of love—will ultimately erode aesthetic and moral perception, ultimately preventing the subject from recognizing the singularity and beauty of the other.

Can we, then, prevent sentimental fiction—profoundly alienating—from eclipsing those other, authentic feelings that connect us to reality and, within it, allow us to find peace? Will we find men and women in the future willing to expose themselves to that serene nakedness of the heart? Individuals capable of taking the risk of falling into ridicule or, worse still, of suffering the violence of a potentially objectifying other? The third and final section of the book addresses all these questions, dedicated to the analysis of postmodern philotechnological and phobotechnological imaginaries, in both their utopian and dystopian versions. Echarte studies their main features and causes, and—more importantly—their effective capacity to transform social habits.

Based on the conclusions of the third section, Echarte formulates the work’s main contribution: “machine love” constitutes one of the greatest risks of our time, yet it continues to receive far less attention than other problems associated with artificial intelligence—undoubtedly more visible and conspicuous—such as algorithmic biases or the transformation of the labor market. Faced with this scenario, Echarte does not propose a reactive technophobia or a nostalgic retreat to pre-technological ways of life. His alternative is more demanding: to recover a robust understanding of human nature and, with it, to “learn anew to tremble” before technological horizons. However, he understands this fear not as paralysis, but as a catalyst for scientific and human progress, capable of rebalancing the forces of the given and the chosen.

Finally, Echarte underscores the urgency of rethinking the relationship between technology and affectivity before certain practices become entrenched as unquestionable beliefs. The book’s relevance in this sense is undeniable. Its analysis aligns with critical authors such as Aldous Huxley, Iris Murdoch, Sherry Turkle, Charles Taylor, and Byung-Chul Han; however, it introduces a unique perspective by emphasizing the centrality of the subjective body, understood as an entity that informs without being reduced to mere information, a source of action, but not a prisoner of the transformations that all action generates—whether external or internal, evaluable or not.

Incidentally, based on this conception of the body, Echarte offers an unusual answer to one of the crucial questions of our technological present: why continue doing what a machine can already do better? The main key to justifying a “yes, it’s worth it” lies—the author argues—in love, the true root of all action and territory forbidden to the machine. Without love, action not only ceases to be meaningful for the agent, but it is emptied of meaning in itself. Therefore, perfection without love is nothing more than an illusion, albeit one very much to the liking of a society obsessed with image, like ours—a society of skills and competition. In it, the pursuit of excellence is emptying the hearts of professionals and, even worse, of lovers, for hasn’t the other ended up as a hunting trophy?

It is foreseeable that the work will provoke controversy, not only among those who defend a materialist or scientistic view of humanity, but also among their apparent opposites: those technopessimists who consider it impossible for artificial intelligence to simulate human behavior to the point of becoming truly indistinguishable from it, even to the point of making us fall in love. Echarte maintains, however, that the appearance of the so-called “stochastic love parrots” is inevitable, not only because of the technological advances of recent years, but also because of what he calls the “reverse of the Turing test”: a progressive loss of human sensitivity that, as mentioned above, renders us incapable of recognizing that which transcends the objective body.

This form of deterioration, or  digital dementia , is fostering new human-machine bonds, but also a deeper transformation of the individual, who becomes a kind of Bayesian machine capable of predicting and even manipulating the future, yet incapable of understanding it. Faced with these new criteria for success—also in the affective realm—Echarte defends an alternative logic of  non-leadership , in which expressive intimacy takes precedence over performative appearances, even at the cost of loneliness. Because, as the author concludes, there are losses more serious than those brought on by loneliness. In increasing order of severity: loving a person-machine, loving a machine, and finally, becoming a person-machine oneself. On the other hand, Echarte writes hopefully, the desert need not be the final destination of expressive intimacy; it can paradoxically become one of the main meeting places of our time, a true “password” for those who still aspire to inherit the earth.

In its final pages,  You Will Fall in Love with a Machine  invites us to rediscover a true technological humanism, capable of embracing great scientific advances without abandoning a demanding conception of what it means to be human. To this end, the author warns that mere technological diets are insufficient: it is not enough to limit the use of technology; rather, it is necessary to find something to fill the void it leaves when it is temporarily set aside. Otherwise, we can only expect anguish, relapses, and frustration in the face of technological addiction.

It is at this point that the book culminates in a reflection on contemplation and the need to relearn how to establish unmediated connections with the other. Echarte offers practical advice for learning to see the world differently and restoring the mystique of the everyday to our present. Thus, far from implying a renunciation of technology, the author argues that from this new and yet ancient way of “seeing” we could expect the greatest technological revolution of the last three centuries; a bold and controversial assertion that encapsulates the core of the essay and invites us to the impossible: to re-spiritualize technology, to take it—and ourselves with it—toward a new world of possibilities hitherto invisible, even to the most audacious transhumanists.

Echarte Alonso, Luis Enrique.

You will fall in love with a machine. Faith in the face of technological singularity .

Madrid: Rialp Editions, 2025.

ISBN: 978-84-321-7185-7.

Luis Echarte. Professor of Humanities and Medical Ethics. University of Navarra