Maybe Chatbots Shouldn’t Get to Say ‘I’ or ‘Me’

Her new book, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, breaks this mold. It is a polemic warning that we have reached a state of emergency where our humanity is at risk from overreliance on soulless machines who pose as our tutors, mentors, friends, colleagues, and lovers. Turkle is aiming for the high bar of books —Silent Spring, The Jungle, Unsafe at Any Speed—that awaken the public to impending crises.

Essentially, this diminutive MIT professor is taking on a multitrillion-dollar industry backed by a government eager to accelerate AI into every corner of our personal and professional lives.

STEVEN LEVY: Your previous books reported results of your research as a social scientist, often leading to troubling conclusions about how people, especially children, interact with computers. But this book reads like you’re breaking the glass and pulling the fire alarm. Why the shift?