Sherry Turkle on the Risks of AI Companionship
PODCAST: Nicholas Thompson and Atlantic Re:think
AI wants to be your friend. And your therapist. And your lover. It’s not an entirely new offer, author and MIT professor Sherry Turkle reminds us, but it’s one that’s grown more dire as AI has improved. In a conversation with Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, Turkle describes the dangers of anthropomorphizing generative AI, gleaned from hundreds of conversations she conducted (with real humans) for her new book, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk To Machines. What do we lose when we make machines our best friends? And what, if anything, do we stand to gain? Turkle details her own experience creating a simulation of her mother, and the wounds that we risk reopening.
Nicholas Thompson is the CEO of The Atlantic, author of the best-selling book “The Running Ground,” and host of The Most Interesting Thing in Tech video series and The Most Interesting Thing in AI podcast. He was previously the editor-in-chief of WIRED and the editor of NewYorker.com. A competitive runner, Nicholas is an American age-group record holder in the 50k run.
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