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.

“It forces you to confront the fact that we know almost nothing about the true nature of reality. Whatever image you have of what's real or possible is obliterated in an instant. You're faced with a world that isn't just strange, but so utterly incomprehensible that it transcends imagination.”
— Andrew Gallimore
“Self-confidence is about believing in your capabilities, while self-esteem is loving yourself irrespective of outcomes. Both are crucial.”
— Suneel Gupta
“Alzheimer's starts its destructive process 30 years prior to its typical diagnosis. Therefore, when considering the prevalence of this disease, we're speaking of 7 million diagnosed patients in the US. But then, one might ask, how many Americans currently have the initial stages of Alzheimer's, characterized by amyloid plaques, cell death, tangles, and inflammation, already festering in their brains? I concur with the higher estimates, suggesting around 40 million people.”
— Dr. Rudolph Tanzi Alzheimer's disease researcher and Harvard Medical School neuroscientist

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 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

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.