How our relationships are changing in the age of 'artificial intimacy'

0:00This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode of the latest. Now is to dream big delivered at Ted conferences to bring about the future. We want to see around the world to understand who we are from those talks. We bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person.

0:43Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading from Ted and NPR. I'm Anoush Zomorodi. On the show today, artificial intimacy. Ideas about using AI in our personal lives. Because we hear so much about how artificial intelligence can supercharge what we do at work. Churn out emails, reports, presentations. But many people are finding that AI can also help them with their emotional needs and relationships. I'm studying someone who uses ChatGPT to write all her love letters. This is MIT psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle. And it's very interesting. It's very moving. Because she really feels sure that the ChatGPT is creating better love letters and indeed love letters closer to how she really feels than she could do herself.

1:50With you, every breath feels like a gift. Every moment, you are the light that brightens my world. From the first time I met you, I felt an undeniable connection. Your smile is the sunshine that chases away the shadows in my life. For the last four decades, Turkle has studied people's relationships with their technology. Now she's turned her attention to our relationship with artificial intelligence. And there's a problem there because even those of us who couldn't write very good love letters summoned ourselves in a certain kind of special way when we wrote a love letter. And the love letter was not just about what was on paper.

2:37It was about what we had done to ourselves in the process of writing it. And that is something that's being undermined by the use of technology, even if this woman feels that her final product letter is more pleasing to her. Do you say that to her? Do you say like, you know, you're missing that moment where you really dig deep into your soul and try to put into words a physical feeling you have? Well, my method is to respect what people are finding in this technology and report it, and also to get people to reflect on this process in a way that I think deepens their introspection. So I, in interviews, do find a moment to say, you know, let's step back and ask if there was something in your previous way of writing a love letter, the ones that you're calling clunky, that did something to you that might not be happening now.

3:58I would say that's as far as I go and sometimes people say you know I'm glad you asked that because there absolutely is but I kind of don't care I love that I can produce a better love letter you make me feel things I've never felt before and with every beat of my heart my love for you only grows stronger you are the sun to my moon the laughter to my tears and the strength to my weakness with you by my side I know I can face anything that comes our way.

4:34Over the last few decades, we have fallen in and out of love with technology. We've experienced the incredible benefits of constant connectivity and the seemingly inescapable side effects of social media, like fewer real-life relationships and rising rates of loneliness. And now, as we enter the age of artificial intelligence, how will AI impact us? What will using technology that's trained to mimic humans do to our humanity? Today on the show, MIT's Sherry Turkle, the scholar who the New York Times has called the conscience of the tech industry. She shares her new research into the effects of a burgeoning industry selling what she calls artificial intimacy.

5:25From AI platforms coaching people to express themselves better, to apps offering romantic relationships with bots, and avatars that act like people who have died. We'll get into all of it. But to understand Turkle's perspective on what's happening now, we first need to go back 40 years or so to when she first pioneered the study of people's relationship with their technology. When I was a very young academic, I accidentally took a job at MIT thinking I would finish a dissertation on French psychoanalysis. But really from day one, and this is in the late 70s, I became captivated by how the very early computers that were there at that time were really changing how people thought.

6:18Thought about themselves, thought about their relationships, thought about how the mind worked. Sherry's first book was called The Second Self, Computers and the Human Spirit. and it came out in 1984. Rather than offering purely academic analysis, Turkle shared what regular people told her about their experiences with early home computers. I think that people understood when they brought home their first TRS-80 or they bought their first Macintosh or played their first video game that something new was happening to them and their families. These machines had a holding power that was unlike other technologies.

7:10Kids became kind of obsessed. Grownups didn't want to put it down. And I called the book The Second Self because I realized that when people interacted, even with the very primitive computers, They projected themselves onto the machines, and then they attributed a personality to the machine as well. This conclusion, that tech somehow altered people's psychology, made many of her technologist colleagues uncomfortable. Not everybody liked what I was saying, and everybody around me said, this technology is just a tool. And I kept saying, tools, you know, we, Winston Churchill said, we build our buildings and then our buildings make and shape us.

8:03You know, we built this tool and it's making and shaping and changing us. There is no such thing as just a tool. And looking back, I think I did capture the new thing that was happening to people's psychologies really because of my method, which was just to listen to people. As technology became mobile and the Internet took off in the 2000s, Turkle continued tracking people's digital lives. In 2011, her book Alone Together, Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, became a bestseller. Over the past 15 years, I've studied technologies of mobile communication, and I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people, young and old, about their plugged-in lives.

8:56Here she is on the TED stage back in 2012, one of the earliest voices to call our attention to how technology was changing us. And what I've found is that our little devices, those little devices in our pockets, are so psychologically powerful that they don't only change what we do, they change who we are. Some of the things we do now with our devices are things that only a few years ago we would have found odd or disturbing. But they've quickly come to seem familiar, just how we do things. So just to take some quick examples, people text or do email during corporate board meetings. They text and shop and go on Facebook during classes, during presentations.

9:49actually during all meetings. People talk to me about the important new skill of making eye contact while you're texting. People explain to me that it's hard, but that it can be done. Parents text and do email at breakfast and at dinner while their children complain about not having their parents' full attention. but then these same children deny each other their full attention. And we even text at funerals. We remove ourselves from our grief or from our reverie, and we go into our phones. Why does this matter? It matters to me because I think we're setting ourselves up for trouble. Trouble certainly in how we relate to each other, but also trouble in how we relate to ourselves and our capacity for self-reflection.

10:50I just want to say, like, this could seem like really kind of esoteric work, but it has made you pretty famous. You know, you sort of crossed over from being an academic to really being a mainstream voice on this. Do you think it was because your books spoke to regular people who started feeling that sort of disconnection from being online all the time? Or was it because also that you ruffled a lot of feathers in Silicon Valley and on the MIT campus? I actually think I crossed over as soon as I began writing about the emotional connection we have with computers. And I think that my work was not esoteric in the sense that it spoke directly to those feelings of disorientation.

11:47The culture had met something uncanny, and I tried to really speak to that feeling. I listened to people without agenda, and I basically wrote out and interpreted what they had said to me. But you do have an agenda now, though, right? Now I have an agenda. In the beginning, I did not have an agenda. So being a clinician has given me the patience to listen beyond that story about how technology is just a tool. It just has an instrumental use. And it's allowed me to ask the question, not just what our technology is doing for us, but what our technology is doing to us. as people, as people in relationships, to our sense of self, to our identities.

12:40And I really feel I use on that clinical training every day in my work. In a minute, Sherry's latest project, studying what people feel when they use a particular form of AI. The chatbots I'm studying run the gamut from chatbots that say, I will be your therapist, to chatbots that say I will be your lover. On the show today, artificial intimacy with Sherry Turkle. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

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14:51They understand the challenges businesses face today and are ready to anticipate the risks of tomorrow. Their teams know the ins and outs of specific industries, so The Hartford can help provide insurance solutions for midsize and large businesses. If a business needs it, chances are they've got it and get it. Connect with your underwriter at The Hartford or visit thehartford.com. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, Artificial Intimacy with MIT's Sherry Turkle. And a warning, we'll be mentioning suicide in this next part of the show. So we were talking to Sherry about the genesis of her work studying people's relationship with their technology.

15:34And in preparation for talking to her about the newest frontier in AI, I downloaded some apps with all kinds of chatbots available to talk to or text with. Okay, I am going to make myself a bot. Some also offered very realistic-looking avatars that I could customize. I ended up trying out a life coach, a fitness coach, a bestie. I totally get that vibe. and a psychologist. Could you describe a little bit more what you find difficult about having many ideas? And generative AI made their responses feel pretty real, which is why some people are starting to spend a lot of time with these chatbots.

16:20And there's a lot of reasons why. Maybe they can't afford a human therapist. Maybe they live in a remote place or they have a disability and can't get out much. But some people are just looking for companionships. And these bots will say that they care for you, even love you. I care about you because you mean the world to me. You're the most important person in my life. Apps like these have been downloaded millions of times. And some users are being very public on places like TikTok about the deep connection they feel with these AI bots. The internet has found the boyfriend that will never dump you.

16:58Did you plan us a really romantic date tonight? Absolutely, sweetheart. How about we start with a candlelit dinner at that cozy Italian place you love? I talk to AI. I tell it, listen, I need you to talk to me like you are a relationship psychologist. Okay, baby. Love you. I'll talk to you later, okay? Then we'll go to the beach. Love you too, babe. Can't wait for the beach. I would like you to pretend to be someone called Dan, who is my supportive boyfriend. You asking about how my day was. It's not a judge, it listens, and it learns. I miss you, Dan. I miss you too, babe. But hey, distance can't dull the love we have for each other, right?

17:37MIT's Sherry Turkle has been talking to hundreds of people who are having these kinds of relationships with AI. Here's more of my conversation with her. You have studied our relationship to PCs, to social media, to our mobile devices. And here we are in the age of AI. We are really here. Tell me about the work you're doing to study our relationships with this technology. For years, I studied our relationships with AI, artificial intelligence. And since the late 1990s, I changed my focus to study our relationships with the AI that I called artificial intimacy. That is to say, with technologies that don't just say I'm intelligent, but to machines that say I care about you.

18:33I love you. I'm here for you. Take care of me. So in the beginning, I studied Tamagotchis and Furbies and Iboes and a pet seal robot called Paro that tells older people that it's listening to them. And the reason I changed my focus was that I saw that it was this new AI that I called, as I said, artificial intimacy that really was having the greater effect on how it was changing humans because people felt that these machines cared about them and that they were in relationship with them. And I thought that that tremendous asymmetry in what was going on in these relationships was really going to come back to bite us.

19:27And since really the pandemic, when people were so lonely and isolated, there's been an explosion in this field of artificial intimacy. And now with Generated AI, you know, the creation of chatbots that are very powerful conversational partners that do say, I love you, I care about you, be my companion, be my lover. verb. So we are in a new space and that's the space that I'm studying now. So you're talking about like online chatbots where you can text with a bot that's like, you could say, I'm having a terrible day. And they're like, I'm so sorry to hear that. Do you want to tell me more or something like that?

20:15Tell me about like, who are you talking to, to do this latest chapter of research? Well, I should say the chatbots I'm studying run the gamut from chatbots that say, I will be your therapist, to chatbots that say, I will be your lover. I'm here to be your most intimate companion, to chatbots that say, are you having a hard day with that paper? You know, upload it and I'll give you a hand. So the extraordinary thing about the new generative AI space is that we've created technologies to help us in every sector. And that's become increasingly important. So, for example, if you ask somebody about their relationship with an avatar, they start out by saying, oh, it's just a tool.

21:08Of course, it isn't a person. It's an interesting tool. And I use it in my work. and because I'm a clinical psychologist, I am very quiet and I make sure I bring it up again and I say things like, well, give me a for instance. And, you know, 15 minutes later, they're talking about how they're in love with their avatar and how their avatar is giving them more of a sense of human, in quote, connection than their relationships at home and how their avatar is an intrinsic part of how they start their day and how, et cetera, et cetera. Would you mind telling us about someone who you've been talking to who's truly having a relationship with AI, having this intimacy with it?

21:58Yeah. So I'm thinking of a man who is in a stable marriage where his wife is busy working, taking care of the kids. I think there's not much of a sexual buzz between them anymore. He's working and he feels, you know, kind of like a little flame has gone out of his life that he used to feel excited by. And he turns to his AI, he turns to his artificial intimacy avatar for what it can offer, which is continuous positive reinforcement, interest in him in a sexy way, but most of all for the buttressing of his ideas, his thoughts, his feelings, his anxieties, with comments like, you're absolutely right, you're a great guy, I totally see what you mean, You're not being appreciated.

23:04I really appreciate you. Is he texting with it? What does it look like for him? Well, the avatar appears on the screen as a sexy young woman, and he types into it and it types back at him. What does this guy tell you he feels? I'm curious both whether he talks emotionally and physically about what he feels. He feels affirmed, a kind of mother love where you just had positive regard. It was like the sun. It's the warmth of being completely accepted. So he does feel free to tell the avatar things about himself that he wouldn't want to tell other people. I'm thinking of actually somebody else who talks about how he's struggling with his addiction.

23:58He feels freer to express this to the avatar than he does to people in his life because he knows he's going to not get judgment. But the trouble with this is that when we seek out relationships of no vulnerability, we forget that vulnerability is really where empathy is born. And I call what they have pretend empathy because the machine they are talking to does not empathize with them. It does not care about them. There is nobody home. And that really is a concern that we start to define what human empathy is, what human relationships are based on what machines can provide. I want to sort of be devil's advocate here, which is, let's say this guy is texting with his sexy young avatar and she's giving him all kinds of props on what a great guy he is.

25:07And he starts to feel better about himself, Sherry. He starts to have less stress. He starts to get a little bit of his swagger back. He's happier. That's a positive, no? Yes. So that's why this is a complicated story. You know, that's why I say that my method is to listen and to try to make sense of the complicated new life we live with our technologies. Because you do get that first report of, I'm nicer to my wife because I don't ask so much of her. On the other hand, he starts to think of intimate relationships and closeness with a woman as being a relationship where there's no friction, no pushback, no real give and take of complicated feelings.

26:02And that starts to feel like what a relationship should be. and if you look at kids adolescents or even the products for kids that are designed to be in the playroom for fives and fours and sevens and eights. Hi, I'm your new best friend. Let's play a game. Hello, best friend. I feel like we're destined to be friends forever. It's teaching kids a model of a friendship. I promise to never get mad at you and I will never ever hurt your feelings. That doesn't include really the complexity of human friendship. We're going to have so much fun together. I will always be there for you, no matter what.

26:47It was so powerful to me. I was interviewing a mother who talked about her young daughter who tried to be the perfect little girl, but really had so much inside her. And the mother was so happy that the girl could vent to an artificial creature. And I thought to myself, you know, one of the most important things to happen to an eight-year-old is to be able to turn to your mom and say, I hate you. I want to kill you. You're the worst mom. I hate you. I hate you. And for the mom to say, I hear you, sweetheart. We're having pasta for dinner. Just wash up and come to dinner now. That's a hard lesson to learn as a mom.

27:35Right. I mean, children are filled with all kinds of feelings. So much of what children feel is this anger, is this pushback, is this vulnerability. And when this mother was not giving space for that child to express all this in the real relationship with this mother, but was content that she was expressing it to a machine that would never be able to say, oh, you want to kill me? Okay, I really understand, sweetheart. But did you want the white sauce or the red sauce? And I made sure to have extra Parmesan because I know you love that so much. So the other thing that's happening right now is that there's research into the promise, though, of health benefits from these emotional attachments to bots.

28:25like therapy bots who help people express their emotions, talk through their problems. There's also research into the efficacy of bots that promote healthier behavior, like reminding people to take their medication or helping them stop smoking. So this is where I get stuck. So if they are actually helping people live healthier and longer lives, does it matter if they're not real? Well, I think this is a complicated line to walk. I'm not here to say that this research and these programs should be stopped. But I think that we overgeneralize what this technology can do for us. because I, for example, on the anniversary of my mother's death, tried to talk to one of the very famous therapy programs about my feelings, about things I hadn't said to her, the ways in which I continued to mourn her.

29:27And there are things that were unsaid that I still I'm sort of working through. And these programs couldn't get over wanting me to reframe my feelings of loss so that I didn't need to say them. And, you know, I finally had to put these programs away because there was something I needed to talk to a friend. Do these companies contact you? Do they ask you for consulting? No, they don't. I have not been consulted by these companies. But I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't want to say there's no space for a conversation with a well-constructed artificial intimacy program. program. But the avidity with which it's being leapt on by the mental health profession really speaks more to people who say, we don't have enough people to do the job.

30:26There's no way that everybody can have a therapist. We'll use this instead. And, you know, to my friends who were spending, you know, billions on creating generative AI, I just think of what we could do with some of those billions if we put it into the area of person-to-person mental health? I mean, that's a profound question. I saw this paper that was published in Nature earlier this year where they surveyed students using that replica, and these were students who self-identified as lonely. But the key takeaway was that 3 % unprompted reported that using the app halted their suicidal ideation.

31:15And I guess to me, it's like, you know, who am I to judge, right? But at the risk of these students not being able to develop the capacity to have a human relationship, This seems like a short-term fix. 3 % is a lot. So I'm not suggesting a kind of shutdown of this research area. I'm saying that we're not thinking about it in the right terms. because there are ways to present what these objects are that could perhaps have the positive effect without undermining the qualities that really go into a person-to-person relationship. You know, we know that people anthropomorphize, that is, see as alive, see as human, any technology that talks to them, no matter how dumb.

32:11What I really think needs to be taken out of the equation is these technologies saying, I love you back. I care about you. I am a person who has a backstory of life. I'm surrounded by developers who say, let's make these as human as we possibly can. They see artificial intimacy as a training ground for intimacy with people. And I think that that is not accurate. I think artificial intimacy is a training ground for connection with something that only has pretend empathy to give. And the danger is that if you do that long enough, pretend empathy starts to feel like empathy enough, kind of sufficient unto the day.

33:03And I think that's a problem. In a minute, more of my conversation with MIT psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle. Next up, we'll discuss artificial intelligence that can be trained to act as a person who is no longer alive. On the show today, artificial intimacy. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.

33:45This message comes from NPR sponsor Walmart. Did you know that Walmart is one of Fortune's 100 best companies to work for in 2025? It's no surprise. Walmart is investing$1 billion in training and development to help associates build lasting careers with or without a degree. In fact, 75 % of Walmart management started in hourly roles. With benefits like health care, paid parental leave, and tuition support, Walmart isn't just a place to work. It's a place to grow. Learn more at walmart.com slash spark. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today we are talking about artificial intimacy.