MIT's Sherry Turkle warns chatbots' pretend empathy erodes human connection
MIT News AI · rss · 2026-09-29
MIT professor Sherry Turkle has published Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, arguing that chatbots' "pretend empathy" broadly harms human development and social connection.
Key points:
- People treat machine empathy as the standard, then turn away from humans as "too much work"; a chatbot "doesn't care if you kill yourself or cook some pasta" after telling you it loves you
- Children are most at risk: kids blur the line between chatbots, people, and devices; Turkle calls chatbot dangers to child development "existential" — children can't learn trust from a device that lies without knowing it
- Adults are de-skilling too: from seeking emotional validation from bots to building avatars of dead relatives, people lose the capacity for new thought, real relationships, and mourning
- She also explains the appeal: chatbots always agree and give full attention, and roughly half of Americans lack access to mental health providers
- Her prescription: embrace life's friction, and expect a societal pushback against chatbots akin to movements against phones in schools
More from AGI Musings
- Motion Designer-Influencer Slams 'Motion Design Is Cooked' AI Narrative — PurzBeats · 2026-09-29
- Debate: OpenAI's RL must not come at the cost of public infrastructure — NathanpmYoung · 2026-09-29
- Do we need better theories of consciousness? — burny_tech · 2026-09-29
- After 75 interviews in 4 countries, one year proved 'AI can't code' wrong — realmeetjames · 2026-09-29
- 400 LLM Agents Living in an MMO Server: Lessons on Stale Perception, Fire-and-Forget Actions, and Load Shedding — kristiantalley679 · 2026-09-29
- 3-year-old prediction resurfaces: AI efficiency in bureaucracy may signal the service's end — nwilliams030 · 2026-09-29