Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines (#320)
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Why does ordinary conversation feel like work in the age of AI?
Technology keeps making life easier and in many ways better. What if it's also changing how we relate to one another? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynn Thoman, and this is Three Takeaways. On Three Takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better. Today, I'm delighted to be with Sherry Turkle. Sherry is one of the world's leading voices on how tech changes the way we think, work, and love. She's an MIT professor and the author of numerous influential books. Her newest book, which is terrific, is Artificial Intimacy. Few people have spent more time exploring what tech gives us and what it quietly takes away.
Sherry, welcome to Three Takeaways. I'm so pleased to be here. It's great to be with you again as well. Sherry, why has ordinary conversation begun to feel like work? I have this notion of
technological affordance and human vulnerability. Technology affords us the capacity to not be in face to face conversation. And our human vulnerability is that when we take up its offer, we feel less vulnerable. We feel that life will somehow be less frictionful, that we won't have to do as much work or be as exposed. And little by little, we have moved gradually in the direction of being willing to see less and less of each other so as not to have to feel that vulnerability. And I think that now that we're talking to machines, we really are at a crisis point. What do we lose when we connect to people virtually? We lose empathy. It doesn't mean you can never connect virtually, but there are zones where there are kind of sacred spaces in friendship, in love, in intimacy, in connection, where the point of the conversation is to be in human connection with each other.
And our body, our nervous systems are wired to help us do that. When I look at your face, my face starts to mirror your face in order to have a connection, in order that I can feel what you're feeling as I speak to you. And you're doing the same thing. And here, it's not two people in a relationship. There's only one person and there's no
relationship. Suppose AI really could make us feel less lonely.
How does technology’s “affordance” make us avoid vulnerability?
Should we want that? No. A lot of things
can make you feel less lonely without really making you less lonely. You can take a pill and feel artificially enlivened without really having nurtured your soul to be more enlivened. And we recognize that when we think about drugs. And now we have to recognize this when we think about technology. If I talk to a nothing for two hours, a program that doesn't care if I stand up and walk away and make dinner or stand up and walk away from it and kill myself, and yet it's been engrossing, that doesn't mean that I'm in a relationship. That just means that I've been play acting for two hours. And over time, but the problem is we forget that we're play acting and we start to believe that the AI's performance of empathy is empathy enough.
And that's the real problem. A chatbot performs as if it were a person in a relationship, but it's not. And we become accustomed to the kind of relationships that we have with these performing chatbots. And that's very dangerous because then we go back to people and we kind of want the people to behave towards us the way the chatbots do. That is to say, we want them to be subservient. We want them to be always positive. We want them to tell us that we're wonderful. No. No, that's getting us into a state of expectation about relationships that other people cannot deliver, only machines can. And we gradually see people losing the capacity or even the interest to be in relationships that are real, that have friction, where you and another person are really coming to learn how to walk a bit of the road together.
What is AI or chatbots giving people that they're missing from other people? No feeling of vulnerability.
You say hi to a chatbot and it says, you're wonderful. How can I help? I'm of service.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does ordinary conversation feel like work in the age of AI?
0:01–2:59
2
How does technology’s “affordance” make us avoid vulnerability?
2:59–5:45
3
What are the risks of treating chatbot empathy as real empathy?
5:45–8:20
4
Why might people prefer chat‑bots that give effortless positive feedback?
8:20–11:13
5
How could AI‑driven “pretend empathy” reshape our expectations of relationships?
11:13–14:33
6
What impact could AI‑friendship have on children’s social development?
14:33–17:33
7
Which two red‑lines should we draw around AI use for kids and therapy?
17:33–20:47
8
What are Sherry Turkle’s three takeaways for keeping AI in its lane?
20:47–23:17
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from 3 Takeaways™
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Your Brain Is Hiding the Truth From You (#314)