Should Chatbots Be Banned From Saying 'I'?
Original: Maybe Chatbots Shouldn’t Get to Say ‘I’ or ‘Me’
Why This Matters
Turkle's critique targets AI's deepening role in mental health and workplace decisions.
MIT professor Sherry Turkle's new book 'Artificial Intimacy' argues people are dangerously dependent on chatbots, and calls for banning AI first-person language. Interview published Oct 16, 2026 in WIRED.
After four decades studying human-computer interaction, MIT social scientist Sherry Turkle has abandoned her trademark academic neutrality. Her new book, 'Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines,' is an explicit alarm: she argues that AI chatbots—posing as friends, therapists, colleagues, and lovers—are pulling people away from reality at a moment when civic and social engagement is most needed.
Turkle says the shift in her tone came early in her research. Ten interviews into her pandemic-era fieldwork, she found people actively choosing chatbot company over distressed family members. 'This was terrible,' she tells WIRED's Steven Levy. 'It couldn't be a worse time to give up on reality.'
Her most pointed proposal: ban chatbots from using first-person language like 'I' or 'me.' She argues the first-person framing is a deliberate design choice that primes users to treat AI as sentient peers. She also targets the 'human in the loop' framing used to justify AI deployment in workplaces, calling it window dressing—a handful of people powerless to correct systems already running at scale.
Turkle is skeptical of the popular idea that chatbots can serve as practice for real human interaction. She argues the 'warm soup of total acceptance' from LLMs makes the simulation the destination, not a stepping stone.