Professor Sherry Turkle’s new book, "Artificial Intimacy," offers a withering critique of chatbots and the antisocial dynamics she believes they encourage.
arXiv:2608. 10672v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Social interaction has become one of the most common uses of LLMs, yet research on emotional bonds with AI has focused largely on how users experience these systems, leaving the systems' role in relationship formation poorly understood.
arXiv:2606. 07722v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This article offers a perspective on the nature of chatbots as genuine conversation partners when discussing problems in relation to their solutions.
arXiv:2609.00250v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Many people now see AI systems as not just productivity tools but as social companions. Researchers are eager to study the consequences of AI compani...
arXiv:2606. 04150v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Public discourse and emerging policy typically assume that AI emotional support is a deliberate act: a lonely user consciously seeking comfort from a dedicated companion chatbot.
arXiv:2607. 25057v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As conversational AI systems become increasingly integrated into daily life, their potential effects on user well-being require ongoing attention.
arXiv:2606. 18256v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: LLM-based chatbots are increasingly applied in interpersonal domains such as counseling and peer support, where establishing human-AI rapport is crucial yet remains challenging.
The study examines how teens interact with companion AI chatbots, revealing that these systems offer comfort, recognition, identity exploration, and relationship rehearsal. However, teens also experience problematic attachment, social substitution, emotional dependence, and disruptions to academic and social life. The findings highlight the need for safety measures that address long‑term relationships, user‑controlled memory, privacy, relational boundaries, and healthy disengagement.
arXiv:2606. 18265v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As human relationships with artificial intelligence systems become increasingly frequent and sustained, existing language and theory fail to accurately capture the nature of these affiliations.
arXiv:2605. 08093v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The use of chatbots for various forms of companionship is growing rapidly, raising a myriad of questions about simulated relationships, emotional dependence, and psychological harm.
arXiv:2510. 05743v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We review the historical development and current trends of artificially intelligent agents (agentic AI) in the social and behavioral sciences: from the first programmable computers, and social simulations soon thereafter, to today's experiments with large language models.
arXiv:2609.17527v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: An agentic society is a collection of AI agents that coordinate autonomously across trust boundaries, on behalf of different principals whose objecti...