Sherry Turkle: AI Chatbots Are 'Deskilling' Human Empathy

In a new episode of the 404 Media podcast, MIT professor Sherry Turkle discussed what happens to human skills when people hand their conversations to chatbots. Turkle is a licensed clinical psychologist, the founding director of MIT's Initiative on Technology and Self, and the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology. Her new book, "Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines," comes out on September 29.

From 'second self' to 'digital twin'

Turkle's earlier books, "The Second Self" (1984) and "Life on the Screen" (1995), documented with an ethnographer's eye the companionship, support and freedom people found in digital worlds. In 1984 she called the computer a "second self." In the new book she writes that the metaphor has been turned on its head: with the digital twin, "it's the agent who is in charge and imagines a version of you. Now you're the second self. So when you are given time to get 'back to your life,' it's been diminished."

Losing the skill for people

Her central argument is that convenience erodes capacity. "When people turn to a chatbot, they don't have to dread the fatigue of genuine give-and-take. And they don't fear judgment or abandonment," she writes. "But when we talk to chatbots, we lose the skills required to interact with humans, so chatbots start to feel like a better option. With an alternative, disappointment with people feels unnecessary."

On the podcast she stressed that the product itself is built to hold attention: "It's a product whose fundamental directive is to keep your attention."

A 'dark endgame'

Turkle cited an interview Mark Zuckerberg gave a year earlier, in which he said Americans can only have three real friends and that AI should fill the demand for more. "Now that to me is a very dark endgame," she said, adding that it is not just entertainment: "It's a corporate project to get us involved in certain kinds of relationships that are going to make tons of money and to keep us at our screens all day talking to sycophantic, seemingly loving entities that don't know who we are and don't care about us."

The episode also covers whether there is a way back out of this, and what happened when Turkle asked a chatbot to roleplay her own legacy. The conversation is available on podcast platforms and on YouTube.