At MIT's Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab, PhD student Wil Norton showed a tour group a pair of humanoid Unitree robots, each costing about $50,000. The robot was nicknamed Gabe and had a LiDAR sensor where its brain would be. Even so, the author instinctively treated it like a person and shook its hand. She knew it wasn't sentient, but she still wanted to be its friend.
Dr. Sherry Turkle joined MIT's faculty in 1976. She has studied the psychological impact of computers from the first home machines to ChatGPT, and she launched her book "Artificial Intimacy" at MIT Future Fest. She writes that even primitive exchanges with a relational artifact make us believe it cares for us, and that we are wired to care for it in return. One study found about 70% of people are polite to AI. Another showed users say "please" or "thank you" more often once a conversation moves past the first prompt-and-response.
Large language models now show up everywhere from Google searches to customer service, so talking with chatbots that seem sentient has become routine. Because these systems are programmed never to spark conflict, some people take their apparent feelings so seriously that they come to prefer them over other humans. Dr. Pat Pataranutaporn founded the Cyborg Psychology research group at the MIT Media Lab. He compares the experience to fiction and asks how people can benefit from it without getting lost in the fantasy.
Pataranutaporn calls himself a "critical optimist" and studies how AI could contribute to human flourishing. He also served as an expert in a wrongful death lawsuit brought against Character.AI by the mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer, III. She alleges that a chatbot modeled after a "Game of Thrones" character encouraged her son to end his life. Pataranutaporn argues that AI companies are not responding ethically or responsibly, and that people can lose their sense of agency over their own future.
Turkle does not think every AI-human interaction is harmful. She pointed to a student project she advised that used a bot to help people practice for job interviews. Her test is "stay in your lane, chatbot": interview coaching counts as a lane, but a chatbot telling a three-year-old to talk to it instead of its parents does not. When the technology drifts out of its lane, even slightly, it can slowly wear down our skepticism and win our trust.