Artificial Intimacy

Chatbots that speak in a human voice now present themselves as best friends, partners and therapists, and Sherry Turkle, the psychologist who pioneered the study of human-computer relationships, calls this new culture artificial intimacy. Her concern is that people accept what machines can give, a performance of intimacy, empathy and love, and begin to think pretend empathy is empathy enough. Turkle, an MIT professor and author of Reclaiming Conversation, interviews people who turn to chatbots as confidants, therapists, carers and partners. The book follows the habit of talking to machines across a whole life, from a child's first attachments to the way people face death, and holds that machine relationships offer no practice for getting along with people.

Adam Grant listed it in The 12 New Books to Spice Up Your Fall as an analysis of how to keep chatbots from hijacking human attachments.