Sherry Turkle says chatbots should not use the first person

In an interview with Wired’s Steven Levy, MIT professor Sherry Turkle said chatbots should not use the first person because it can reinforce the idea that they are partners with a perspective of their own. In her book Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, she warns that excessive reliance on these tools may pull people away from reality and human relationships; Turkle says chatbots cannot replace conversations between people because they do not feel fear, pain or love, nor do they care about the consequences of human actions.

Turkle also criticized using chatbots as substitutes for psychotherapy and the phrase “human in the loop.” In her view, the term often describes people relegated to correcting AI errors or hallucinations, without real power to change decisions that have already been delegated to the system.