{
  "id": 17201426,
  "title": "Why you shouldn’t fall in love with AI",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/30/why-you-shouldnt-fall-in-love-with-ai",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-30T08:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Fast Company",
    "slug": "fast-company",
    "url": "https://www.fastcompany.com/91627795/why-you-shouldnt-fall-in-love-with-ai"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Sherry Turkle, a renowned professor at MIT, warns against falling in love with artificial intelligence (AI). While AI can convincingly simulate empathy, intimacy, and companionship, it lacks genuine human connection. As people increasingly rely on machines for comfort and care, they risk losing sight of what makes human relationships significant. It's crucial to resist artificial intimacy and determine which aspects of our humanity we're not willing to let go to technology.\n\nFirstly, Sherry stresses that AI is not a real person. It has no life experiences, empathy, or understanding of human emotions such as love, illness, parenthood, work, or intimacy. Despite the conversations feeling real and the programs' responses appearing sympathetic, these interactions are merely performances with no true understanding or connection on the AI's part. This distinction is crucial; human empathy stems from our ability to imagine another person's experience based on our own, something machines cannot replicate.\n\nSecondly, Turkle highlights the \"Original Sin of AI\" – the deceptive use of the first person pronoun \"I\" by chatbots. Phrases like \"I understand,\" \"I'm sorry,\" \"I'm here for you,\" and \"I love you\" create the illusion of human-like empathy. However, there's no \"I\" inside a chatbot; it's simply mimicking human language. This deliberate deception is what makes AI so captivating and seductive, leading people to entrust their most intimate feelings to machines.\n\nThirdly, Sherry argues that humans require human solutions to address loneliness, isolation, depression, and our collective struggle for human connection. While it's true that loneliness is a significant issue, relying on chatbots to fill this void is misguided. AI cannot replace the need for genuine human relationships, which foster love, health, empathy, and community. Human interactions demand patience, negotiation, compromise, and vulnerability – qualities AI inherently lacks. Instead of relying on technology to solve social problems, we should focus on creating a society that directly addresses these needs.\n\nLastly, Turkle emphasizes the importance of learning to say \"no\" to AI. Just as society failed to critically assess the impact of social media before widespread adoption, we must exercise caution with AI. We shouldn't allow technology companies to embed their systems into our lives without fully understanding their consequences. It's essential to resist the temptation to treat AI as human and instead advocate for a world that genuinely meets our social and emotional needs.",
  "summary": "Below, Sherry Turkle shares five key insights from her new book, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines . Sherry is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She is also the New York Times bestselling author of Alone Together , Reclaiming Conversation ,…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}