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The Original Sin of Artificial Intimacy: A Conversation with Sherry Turkle on Chatbots, Empathy and Why We Have Abandoned Each Other

In this interview, I spoke to Sherry Turkle, the MIT psychologist who has spent forty years studying our relationships with machines, about her new book Artificial Intimacy: why a chatbot cannot be a therapist, what these…

Vikas Shah 30 min read

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Three thousand moments. Three picked at random.

“We are facing the mother of all debt crises. When you look at the data on private and public debt, the debt to GDP ratio was near 200% of global GDP in 1999, today it's more like 350% and rising. In advanced economies, it's over 420% and in China, 330% and rising.”
— Nouriel Roubini Economist known for predicting the 2008 financial crisis.
“To be completely happy is the same as to be fulfilled, to flourish, or to thrive – to enjoy complete well-being, to have our complete and final good. We seek happiness for its own sake, not to get something else. This is our goal and deepest longing.”
— J. Budziszewski Professor of Government and Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin
“I realised that athletes were my customers- they were the people I wanted to sell too. We wrote to them with a 15% discount offer, and the chance to become an agent to help fund their club. I must have got 200 agents signed-up and the business started to grow.”
— Joe Foster

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  1. 01 Business & Economics The End of Hand-Written Code: A Conversation with David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) on AI, Omarchy and the Future of Programming 365 interviews
  2. 02 Culture, Society, Sports & Arts The Original Sin of Artificial Intimacy: A Conversation with Sherry Turkle on Chatbots, Empathy and Why We Have Abandoned Each Other 238 interviews
  3. 03 Politics & Policy Who Decides What a Country Is? Michael and Liam Bates on Sealand, Sovereignty and Belonging 172 interviews
  4. 04 Science & Technology Different, Not Wrong: A Conversation with Dave Plummer on Autism, Task Manager and Coding with AI 140 interviews
  5. 05 Health & Medicine Different, Not Wrong: A Conversation with Dave Plummer on Autism, Task Manager and Coding with AI 75 interviews
  6. 06 Nobel Laureates Markets, Morals and the Road Ahead: A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Professor Alvin Roth 21 interviews

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