MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that chatbots’ simulated empathy can make human relationships feel like hard work by comparison. Her new book examines how people use conversational AI across different stages of life, from children learning what counts as a person to adults seeking advice or companionship.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
In an interview published by MIT News on 29 September, Turkle discusses her book, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, published that day. She describes interviews with children and adults who use chatbots, including an eight-year-old who treats grandparents and ChatGPT as things reached through the same phone, and a mother who uses a chatbot to tell bedtime stories.
Turkle argues that systems which always affirm users can offer comfort while encouraging people to avoid the friction of human relationships. She says heavy use may weaken social and work-related skills. Those are her conclusions from the research and interviews discussed in the article, not findings that establish the same effect for every user.
Why it matters
Chatbots are increasingly used for conversation, advice and emotional support, including by children. Turkle’s concern is not simply that a machine might give a poor answer: it is that a convincing performance of care could change what people expect from one another, or tempt them to sidestep relationships that take effort.
The article also recognises why people turn to chatbots: they are available and affirming, while access to services such as mental-health care can be limited. That makes the question more complicated than switching a feature off. The useful debate is what support these tools provide, what they might displace, and how those trade-offs should be assessed.
Our read
Turkle’s warning deserves a hearing, but a forceful argument is not the same as a settled verdict on everyone’s chatbot use. The practical distinction is between using a tool for a task and treating its fluent replies as evidence of care. That may sound obvious until the replies are designed to feel personal.
What to watch
- Whether further research measures how chatbot use affects relationships and social skills over time.
- How AI services communicate their limits to children and people seeking emotional support.
- Whether schools, families and care providers develop guidance that addresses both the appeal and the trade-offs.
Discussion spark: Should conversational AI be treated as a useful source of support when human help is hard to access, or does its constant affirmation risk making real relationships easier to abandon?
Sources and evidence
- Who we become when we talk to machines (29 September 2026, 04:00 UTC)
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