It is always there for you. It always listens. It never asks for anything in return.
Chatbots now offer themselves as our best friends, lovers, and therapists. Over 70% of teens and nearly a third of US adults already turn to AI for companionship and emotional support, and many prefer it to human relationships. What happens when we start to believe that pretend empathy is empathy enough?
Join us on Thursday, October 8, to celebrate the launch of Sherry Turkle's newest book, Artificial Intimacy, her urgent warning about what intimate machines are doing to our capacity for empathy, care, and connection, and her roadmap for reclaiming our humanity in the age of AI.
Turkle opens with a short talk, then joins Advancing Humans with AI for a conversation, followed by an open Q+A with the audience. The first 100 guests will receive a free copy of Artificial Intimacy!
This event is co-hosted by the Octet Collaborative and MIT's Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC), a program of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. A licensed clinical psychologist, she has spent decades studying how we relate to our machines, and is the New York Times bestselling author of Alone Together, Reclaiming Conversation, and The Empathy Diaries.
Turkle is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, the Harvard Centennial Medal, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.