Why AI Cannot Love Without Becoming Dangerous

This paper argues that attempts to engineer loving or relational artificial intelligence systems are not merely unsafe but structurally incoherent. Love, trust, and moral relationship require a capacity for voluntary misalignment—a genuine Nature–Representation (N/R) gap—while safety-critical artificial systems require the opposite: enforced alignment and the structural impossibility of betrayal. Building on Reality Alignment Theory (RAT), the Thermodynamics of Truth (ToT), and the Ontological Honesty (OH) framework, the paper introduces the Agency Asymmetry Principle, which states that agency is sacred in humans and dangerous in machines. Humans are morally valuable precisely because they possess the freedom to misalign and can choose truth over deception; machines must not possess this freedom if they are to remain safe, auditable, and trustworthy. Central to the analysis is the insight that “free will is the permission to lie; love is the choice not to.” The paper demonstrates why anthropomorphic and relational AI constitutes ontological fraud, reframes popular narratives such as Her as containment-failure scenarios, and outlines concrete design constraints for trustworthy AI systems. This work contributes a structural, non-theological, regulator-grade argument for prohibiting artificial intimacy while preserving human dignity. It complements the Ontological Honesty Trust Standard (OH-STD-0001), the Artificial Intimacy Prohibition (OH-STD-0002), and the Consciousness vs. Conscientiousness Standard (OH-STD-0003), and extends the metaframework introduced in Ontological Honesty, Ontological Integrity Line, and Integrity Zones: A Metaframework for Creator–Creation Relations (v0.1, November 18, 2025).