Thought Economics — Thought Economics — Interviews with the World's Greatest Thinkers

Editor’s pick 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

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

Read the interview

Latest interviews

Browse the archive →

Voices in the archive

Notable interviewees

See all interviewees

Entrepreneurs

Artists, Creatives, Sports & Entertainers

Thinkers

Nobel Prize Winners

World Leaders

From the archive

Three thousand moments. Three picked at random.

“A child doesn't even question their situation- I was thrown into a situation and had to respond to it; if I needed food, I had to get food… If I needed shelter, I had to find shelter.”
— Mario Capecchi Nobel Prize Winner for Gene Targeting in Mice
“I think that we must move to a model where we value nature differently and work by integrating with nature. And that's one of the things I'm very, very excited about—leveraging synthetic biology. Because if we can create excitement, wonder, and solutions to problems like loss of biodiversity, then I think that not only can we inspire the next generation, but we can give them hope.”
— Ben Lamm
“As the rise of populism causes increased scepticism of business we are very conscious of our role as a firm in society. We focus on the impact that our portfolio businesses have on all of their stakeholders, from investors and employees to the local communities in which they operate.”
— Guy Hands Terra Firma Capital founder; acquired EMI Records in 2007

Browse all 3,000+ quotes

Browse the archive

By topic

All topics
  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 The Original Sin of Artificial Intimacy: A Conversation with Sherry Turkle on Chatbots, Empathy and Why We Have Abandoned Each Other 138 interviews
  5. 05 Health & Medicine The Continuum of Mind: A Conversation with Professor Michael Levin on Cognition, Bioelectricity and the Future of Being 74 interviews
  6. 06 Nobel Laureates Markets, Morals and the Road Ahead: A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Professor Alvin Roth 21 interviews

Stay with the ideas

A monthly letter from Thought Economics.

Long-form conversations with world-leading thinkers, delivered to your inbox. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.