Who We
Become When
We Talk
to Machines
“If social media came for our attention, artificial intelligence
now comes for something deeper:
our capacity for attachment.”
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Advance Praise
“All around us, people are beguiled by the siren song of artificial intimacy. Chatbots offer inexpensive therapy, friendship, sexual fantasy, and even romantic love. Sherry Turkle's 40 years of groundbreaking research and beautiful writing make her the most qualified member of Team Humanity to call us back to our senses, and to each other.”
―Jonathan Haidt,
author of The Anxious Generation
“The best thing I’ve ever read about one of the biggest questions of our time: how will we relate to machines as they become more like us? Sherry Turkle’s book is insightful, emotional, rigorous, and deeply human. Read it cover to cover and absorb its wisdom; don’t, whatever you do, just ask a bot to summarize it.”
―Nicholas Thompson,
author of The Running Ground
“Sherry Turkle, our wisest guide to digital life, has written her most urgent book yet. Artificial Intimacy will help you avoid the profound but often hidden threats AI poses to you and your relationships. Read it and share it with all the humans you know.”​
―Nicholas Carr,
author of The Shallows
“The preeminent sociologist of smart machines, Sherry Turkle, now writes against the techno-utopianism of our time and the promise of frictionless intimacy, chronicling the distinction between virtual and actual human community and connection.”​
―MIchael Sandel,
Author of The Tyranny of Merit
​​“A necessary exploration of what happens when we seek the comforts of connection over the demands of relationships. A must-read for anyone engaging with AI today. That just about means all of us.”​​
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―Esther Perel,
author and host of Where Should We Begin
​“Sherry Turkle is the exact right person at the exact right time to write us this exact book. A warning of what we must protect in our age of AI and a celebration of what it is to be human, Artificial Intimacy it is a love letter to humanity written by a woman of brilliance and heart.”​​​
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―Priya Parker,
author of The Art of Fighting
​“Our relational nature as human beings is being colonized by machines that cleverly exploit our longing for human connection, simulate intimacy, and ultimately entrain us into a world of pretend ― artificial intimacy. May this book reinforce our commitment to trust and inhabit our analog nature as human beings, and resist wholesale digital capture”​​​
―Jon Kabat-Zinn,
author of Wherever You Go, There You Are
​“A pointed critique of the growing impact of artificial intelligence on human relationships . . . [Turkle] urg[es] readers to question whether these tools enhance or inhibit personal growth. Harrowing and poignant, this timely warning deserves to be widely read.”​​​
―Publishers Weekly
Artificial Intimacy:
Who We Become When We Talk to Machines
By Sherry Turkle
From the author of prescient best seller and classic Reclaiming Conversation, Sherry Turkle, comes an urgent warning about how our ever-increasing reliance on human-like AI chatbots is eroding our capacity for empathy, caring, and the very qualities that make us human.
If social media came for our attention, artificial intelligence is now coming for our capacity for attachment. Chatbots that speak to us in a human voice offer themselves as best friends, lovers, and psychotherapists. As of 2025, over 70% of teens and nearly one-third of US adults rely on AI for companionship and emotional support, with many preferring these chatbot relationships over human ones.
When we talk to chatbots in these roles, as intimate machines, we accept as sufficient what machines can offer: the mere performance of intimacy, empathy, and love. We begin to think that pretend empathy is empathy enough. We redefine human capacities for care, solitude, and intimacy in terms of what machines can do. Sherry Turkle, the psychologist who pioneered our understanding of human-computer relationships, calls the new culture of chatbots artificial intimacy,our new AI.
Sherry Turkle
Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She is a specialist in how technology changes us psychologically and socially.
Her new book is on our relationships with chatbots —Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines. It will be published by Little, Brown and Company on September 29, 2026. It captures the seductive, beguiling nature of our new faux companions, tracing their effects throughout a human life—from childhood to parenthood, from work to love and more. She warns that these machines are quietly reshaping us - teaching us to avoid risk, sidestep difficult conversations, deny grief, and relinquish skills that make us human: empathy, resilience, the ability to navigate uncertainty. MORE
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Sherry's Recent Thoughts
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW:
The Empathy Rules
MIT announced that all instruction, would be in person, with vaccination and regular testing. In context, I found this anxiety-provoking. READ MORE
THRIVE:
Coming Out Of the Pandemic With Fresh Eyes
Arianna Huffington interviews Sherry Turkle READ MORE
MEDIUM:
I Went to Paris to Mourn My Mother
Like Proust and his madeleine cake, the taste of pain d’épices still reminds me of my initial grief. READ MORE
TIME MAGAZINE:
The Pandemic Essay
The Pandemic Made Us Strangers to Ourselves
READ MORE
Sherry Turkle in the Media
New Yorker:
Sherry Turkle's Plugged in Year
The sociologist has critiqued our digital addictions. Now, like the rest of us, she’s been trapped behind her screens. MORE
Financial Times:
Why was I asked To make Steve Jobs dinner?
The psychologist on difficult parents,
the dangerous seductiveness of the digital — and taking
on sexism in academia MORE
Clear + Vivid:
with Alan Alda
Sherry Turkle movingly—and candidly—weaves together events in her own life with her dawning understanding of the way technology can weaken human connections.
MORE
