'We can befriend them, but they are not befriending us': NYRB revisits AI intimacy
_akpiper · x · 2026-11-07
MIT professor Sherry Turkle shared James Gleick's essay in the New York Review of Books, which draws on her book Artificial Intimacy alongside Inventing Eliza. From our earliest experiences with chatbots, Gleick argues, we have faced the question: what happens to us when we mistake simulated caring for the real thing? As he puts it, "We can befriend them if we like, but they are not befriending us." @akpiper responds that studying AI's effects on interaction and well-being must start from description, not prescription — measuring actual effects rather than lumping all AI-mediated communication into one moralistic bin.
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