Episode #4
Sherry Turkle: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines
What happens when machines become part of our relationships? And what happens to us when we start conversing with machines? In this episode of Me:chine Dialogues , Tracey Follows speaks with Sherry Turkle , MIT professor, psychologist and one of the world’s most influential thinkers on technology, identity and human relationships. For more than four decades, Sherry has studied what our relationships with technologies reveal about us — from computers and virtual worlds to smartphones, social media, robots and now artificial intelligence. Her books include The Second Self , Life on the Screen , Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversation . Her new book, Artificial Intimacy , takes that work into the age of relational AI: a world in which machines do not simply provide information or perform tasks, but listen, respond, remember and increasingly present themselves as companions. The question is no longer simply whether machines can imitate intimacy. It is what happens to us when we begin to experience them as intimate. In this conversation, Tracey and Sherry explore the shift from an attention economy to an attachment economy — and why artificial companionship raises questions that go much deeper than whether AI appears empathetic or convincing. They discuss the importance of friction, vulnerability and reciprocity in human relationships; why being perfectly understood may not be the same as being genuinely known; and what can happen when machines offer the appearance of relationship without the demands that relationships with other people place upon us. The conversation also moves into the questions at the heart of Me:chine: If a machine remembers us, reflects us back to ourselves, advises us, comforts us or presents us with versions of who we might become, where exactly is the self located? And how much of selfhood depends upon encountering something — or someone — who is genuinely other than us, and can experience the arc of life? Tracey and Sherry explore self-continuity, possible and future selves, the cultural differences that shape how we imagine human–machine relationships, and what agency might mean as identity becomes increasingly distributed across people, platforms and intelligent systems.. Me:chine Dialogues is a special series from The Future of You exploring identity, agency and synthetic systems — where the machinable and unmachinable selves meet. Sherry Turkle’s work has occupied this territory for decades. And as machines become more conversational, more agentic and more emotionally available, the question becomes increasingly urgent: What kind of selves are we becoming in relationship with them? Explore more of Sherry Turkle’s work: → Artificial Intimacy → Sherry Turkle at MIT Explore more of Tracey’s work: → Me:chine World and essays: me-chine.com → Podcast archive: The Future of You → System & Self: futuremade.group About Tracey Follows Tracey Follows is a futurist working at the intersection of philosophy, technology and futurology, specialising in identity, agency and the relationship between systems and selves. Her work includes System & Self , Database Self and Me:chine — exploring what happens as machines increasingly participate in the making of the self. Her central premise: “Every future is written between the system and the self.” Music “A New Day (intro)” performed by Skott Licensed courtesy of Cosmos Music, Safari Riot Licensed courtesy of Downtown Music UK Limited, Safari Riot Publishing, Sony Music Publishing
