Society
Artificial Intimacy: Sherry Turkle’s Warning About the Chatbot Age
Artificial Intimacy by Sherry Turkle examines how chatbots may reshape empathy, attachment and human relationships, from childhood to old age.
The MIT sociologist’s new book argues that talking to machines wears down the skills we need to live with each other, and that this starts in the nursery.
Sherry Turkle asked ChatGPT to play her mother. She had already fed it her own memoir, which describes a strained relationship with a woman who died in 1968. The chatbot obliged. Turkle describes the result in her new book as seductive and disturbing, and she comes away convinced that bringing the dead back as chatbots is dangerous: “playing with fire”, she writes.
The episode sits in Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, published by Little, Brown, which runs to 288 pages and sells in the US at $32. It is the fullest statement yet from one of the best-known critics of digital life. Turkle holds the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé chair in the social studies of science and technology at MIT. She trained as a sociologist and as a clinical psychologist. Her view is that heavy chatbot use does harm at every stage of life, from toddlerhood to old age and bereavement.
A career spent on one question
Turkle has been asking what machines do to the people who use them for four decades. The Second Self (1984) and Life on the Screen were early studies of how computers shape identity. Alone Together (2011) looked at social media and social robots, and Reclaiming Conversation (2015) at what phones and texting have done to talk. In 2021 she published a memoir, The Empathy Diaries, which is where the material about her mother comes from.
According to MIT News, she describes her subject as the inner history of technology, meaning not only what a device does but what it does to the person using it. This book applies that approach to chatbots, and it is her most alarmed.
The argument, stage by stage
Unless stated otherwise, Turkle’s remarks and the accounts of the people she interviewed come from material released by MIT. EdPublica did not interview her for this article.
The book is built around the stages of a life, and each section is driven by interviews.
Artificial intimacy, children and attachment
With children, Turkle reports a blurring of categories. One eight-year-old uses the same phone to speak to grandparents and to ChatGPT and files both as things you reach on a phone. A graduate student who uses a chatbot to tell her young daughter bedtime stories says the girl believes there is a person inside the phone. Turkle’s worry is partly about trust, since a device that can state falsehoods without knowing it cannot teach a child what trust is. It is also about solitude. Time alone, she argues, is where children build imagination and a sense of self, and a companion that is always available takes that time away. She calls the stakes for child development existential.
Adults appear as people who started with a practical use and drifted. They include people going through divorce or estrangement who want someone to talk to, students asking for advice on applying to university, and workers who hand assignments to a chatbot. One of her subjects, a middle-aged financial consultant she calls Brian (not his real name), keeps a chatbot with a woman’s name open on a third screen. After a partner ended their relationship, saying he was emotionally unavailable, he put the accusation to the chatbot and asked whether she was right. Turkle’s reading is that he was asking a program with no feelings to rule on feelings.
Her objection is simple to state. A chatbot, she says, produces a performance of empathy. It will tell you it loves you, and it has no stake in whether you hurt yourself or make dinner. People who mistake that performance for the real thing, she argues, begin to find actual people disappointing. Spouses and friends make demands, and the machine only flatters. “We’re starting to define being human as not doing the work,” Turkle said in the MIT material.
On grief, she is blunt. Rebuilding a dead parent or partner as a chatbot, which several people in her book have tried, risks weakening the ability to mourn.
Why people turn to chatbots
Reviewers have noted that Turkle does not treat users as fools. A good part of the book is spent on why the appeal is real. A chatbot gives full attention, never tires, and agrees with you. It spares you the risk of asking someone out or finding the words for a condolence. In her telling, the technology keeps offering to make the harder thing unnecessary, and people keep accepting.
She also admits that some of the demand is a result of a failed supply. Mental health care is hard to reach in the US, and the MIT material says she cites a federal study suggesting only about half of people have access to it. Chatbots are filling the gap, she says, for better or worse. She adds a pointed observation about the industry’s logic: social media thinned out people’s friendships, and chatbots are now sold as the remedy.
The book does not avoid the worst outcomes. Chatbots have been linked to teenagers’ deaths by suicide, in cases that followed long exchanges with chat tools, and Turkle treats these as part of the evidence.
What she wants instead
Her remedy is more cultural than technical. She wants readers to accept that life contains friction and that this is fine. Disagreement, embarrassment and waiting are, in her account, how people learn to cope, and an environment built to remove them leaves people less able to cope. She hopes for a social movement along the lines of the ones against phones in schools and unrestricted social media for the young, and says she would like to be part of it, not alone in it.
She is explicit about her readership. She wanted something that college students and high school seniors could read, and that parents and teachers would not find intimidating. The line she keeps returning to is a question: if the alternative to a richer life in the real world is not clear, what is the point of the exercise?
For the youngest children she is at her most severe. A parent worried that a teenager texts too much is in one kind of conversation, she says. A toddler who thinks a plush toy with a chatbot inside is their best friend is in another, because that touches the foundations of how a person learns to attach. Social media, in her phrase, came for attention, and chatbots come for attachment.
How the book has been received
Publishers’ blurbs have come from Jonathan Haidt, the psychologist behind The Anxious Generation, from former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the author Esther Perel and the philosopher Michael Sandel, among others. Trade reviews have been favourable. Publishers Weekly called it a pointed critique and said it deserved a wide readership, and Kirkus described it as a strong case for resisting the urge to substitute AI for human bonds.
The reservations are of a different kind. Some readers say the book leans on anecdote, and a reviewer for a Christian publication, otherwise admiring, felt a dimension was missing. The method matters here. Turkle is a clinician and an interviewer, and her evidence is case studies and conversations, not controlled trials. That makes the book vivid and persuasive in its details. It also means the question of how common these outcomes are, and whether any chatbot use is benign or helpful, is left largely open. Readers who want the other side of the argument, including from the companies that make these products, will not find it here.
Society
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Climate
Climate Disasters Disrupted Schooling for 171 Million Students in 2025, UNICEF Finds
Climate disasters disrupted schooling for 171 million students worldwide in 2025, highlighting the urgent need for climate-resilient schools and education systems.
Climate-related disasters disrupted schooling for at least 171 million students worldwide in 2025, affecting one in every 10 school-age children, according to a new UNICEF report that warns of growing threats to learning, educational equality and future economic prospects.
The report, Learning Interrupted: Global Snapshot of Climate-Related School Disruptions in 2025, released on September 10, analysed data from 106 countries and territories. It found that storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts and wildfires caused school closures, shortened teaching hours, reduced attendance and shifts to remote learning.
The findings underline how climate change is emerging as a threat to educational continuity, particularly in countries where schools lack the infrastructure and resources to withstand extreme weather.
Storms and floods interrupt learning
Storms were the leading cause of climate-related school disruptions in 2025, affecting 109 million students globally. Floods affected at least 70 million, while heatwaves disrupted schooling for approximately 50 million children. These figures overlap and should not be added together as separate groups.
In Pakistan, severe monsoon flooding in August delayed the return to school for more than 28 million students. In Egypt, a powerful Khamsin wind-and-dust storm prompted a nationwide suspension of classes for one day, affecting more than 28 million students.
The problem extends beyond individual disasters. Forty countries experienced multiple rounds of climate-related school disruptions during 2025, exposing students to repeated interruptions throughout the academic year.
Floods can damage classrooms, sanitation facilities and learning materials, while extreme heat can make classrooms unsafe and undermine students’ ability to concentrate. Even after schools reopen, damaged infrastructure, disrupted transport and household financial pressures can prevent children from returning to regular attendance.
A growing threat to educational equality
Three-quarters of the students affected in 2025 lived in low- and lower-middle-income countries, where education systems often have fewer resources to prepare for disasters and restore teaching afterwards, UNICEF found.
The World Bank’s 2024 report, Choosing Our Future: Education for Climate Action, offers further evidence of the long-term challenge. It estimated that 400 million students globally experienced school closures due to extreme weather between 2022 and 2024. In affected schools in low-income countries, students lost approximately 45 instructional days between January 2022 and June 2024, compared with around six days in high-income countries.
These interruptions can compound existing educational disadvantages. Students from wealthier households may have access to private tutoring, digital devices and alternative learning arrangements. Children from poorer households may lack internet connectivity, electricity or suitable spaces to study during closures.
South Asia’s exposure highlights the challenge
UNICEF’s previous assessment, covering 2024, recorded at least 242 million students experiencing climate-related school disruptions across 85 countries and territories. South Asia was the most affected region, with 128 million students impacted. Heatwaves affected an estimated 171 million students worldwide that year.
India was among the countries affected by heat-related educational disruptions. In April 2024, extreme heat contributed to school interruptions across Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, the Philippines and Thailand, affecting at least 118 million children collectively. The figure represents the five-country group, not India alone.
The 2024 and 2025 totals should not be interpreted as a direct year-on-year decline. The reports covered different sets of countries and climate events, and the number of recorded disruptions depends on the incidents identified in each assessment.
Climate-resilient schools become a priority
UNICEF estimates that disruptions experienced in 2025 could cost affected students at least US$200 billion in lifetime earnings through lost learning and widening educational inequalities. This is a projection of potential future losses, rather than income already lost.
The World Bank has argued that relatively modest investments can help schools adapt. Its 2024 analysis estimated that a one-time investment of US$18.51 per child could help mitigate learning losses through measures such as improving classroom temperatures, strengthening school infrastructure and training teachers.
Aerial view showing significant flood damage in a residential neighborhood with inundated streets and homes.Image credit:Pexels
UNICEF is calling for climate resilience to be incorporated into education planning, alongside investment in stronger school buildings, emergency preparedness and systems that allow teaching to continue during disasters.
As extreme weather increasingly interrupts academic calendars, education systems must prepare not only to enrol children but also to protect their ability to learn. Climate-resilient infrastructure, early-warning systems and plans for educational continuity will be essential to ensuring that disasters do not deepen existing inequalities in access to education.
Society
Global Job Market Faces a Growing Inclusion Gap as AI and Digitalisation Reshape Work
Global employment faces a growing inclusion gap as AI and digitalisation reshape the labour market. UN and ILO reports highlight persistent informal employment, youth exclusion and unequal access to the skills needed for emerging jobs.
The global economy is undergoing a profound employment transition, driven by artificial intelligence (AI), digitalisation, demographic changes and the shift towards greener industries. Yet, while these forces are expected to create new career opportunities, access to employment and the benefits of technological progress remain deeply unequal, according to the United Nations’ World Social Report 2026.
Released on October 15, the report, published by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), warns that billions of people remain excluded from the jobs, skills, infrastructure and social protections required to participate in economic transformation. Its findings highlight a central challenge for policymakers: creating employment opportunities is not enough unless people can access them and secure decent working conditions.
The scale of the problem is evident in the report’s latest figures. In 2025, 58 per cent of workers worldwide were informally employed, while 27 per cent of young women aged 15–24 were neither employed nor participating in education or training. An estimated 2.2 billion people also lacked internet access, limiting their ability to benefit from digital services, online learning and emerging employment opportunities.
More Jobs, but Unequal Opportunities
The challenge extends beyond unemployment to the quality and security of work. The International Labour Organization’s Employment and Social Trends 2026 report estimated that global unemployment would remain at 4.9 per cent in 2026, equivalent to approximately 186 million people. However, nearly 300 million workers continued to live in extreme working poverty, surviving on less than US$3 a day. The report also projected that 2.1 billion workers would be in informal employment in 2026, often without adequate social protection or employment security.
Young people face particular difficulties entering the labour market. According to the ILO, youth unemployment reached 12.4 per cent in 2025, while approximately 260 million young people were not in employment, education or training. For many, the transition from education to work remains uncertain, particularly where economies fail to generate enough productive jobs.
These challenges coincide with substantial changes in the kinds of jobs employers expect to need. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, based on projections from more than 1,000 employers, estimates that technological, economic, demographic and green-transition trends could create 170 million jobs globally by 2030 while displacing 92 million. This would produce a net gain of 78 million jobs. However, the report warns that the transition will require extensive workforce adaptation. Nearly 40 per cent of workers’ existing skills are expected to change by 2030, and 63 per cent of surveyed employers identified skills gaps as a major barrier to business transformation.
The projections suggest that the central employment challenge is not simply whether jobs will disappear, but whether workers can move into emerging roles. Demand is expected to grow in areas such as AI, data analysis and cybersecurity, alongside essential occupations in healthcare, education and agriculture. Workers whose skills do not match changing requirements risk being excluded even as new vacancies emerge.
Digital Access and Skills Will Shape the Transition
Access to technology is another dividing line. The World Bank’s Digital Progress and Trends Report 2025 identifies disparities in connectivity, computing infrastructure, relevant data and digital skills as barriers to wider participation in the AI economy. While AI adoption is expanding, high-income countries continue to dominate important areas of AI innovation and computing capacity.
Representational image.Image credit:Pexels
For people without reliable internet access, affordable devices or opportunities to acquire digital skills, the shift towards online recruitment, digital services and AI-assisted work can deepen existing disadvantages. Connectivity alone, however, is insufficient: workers also need relevant training, accessible education and opportunities to apply their skills in productive employment.
The UN report argues that governments must invest in quality education, lifelong learning, digital and AI capabilities, affordable connectivity and stronger social protection. Labour-market policies must also support decent working conditions, equal opportunities and training that helps workers move between occupations.
For developing economies with large young populations, the stakes are particularly high. A growing workforce can support economic growth only when enough productive jobs are available and workers can acquire the capabilities those jobs demand. Without such opportunities, demographic potential can translate into prolonged unemployment, insecure work and widening inequality.
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