AI Reports · Harvard · 2026-10-14 · Blog / commentary
My chatbot is my boyfriend. What’s the harm?
In a Harvard Gazette interview, MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle discusses her new book, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines. She describes how people have been drawn to machine companionship, from early robotic toys to social media and now generative AI. Turkle argues that chatbots' use of the first person is a fundamental deceit, since they offer no real connection and there is no 'I' behind the words.