Sherry Turkle
Professor at MIT and a licensed clinical psychologist who has studied people's relationships with technology for decades.
“The original sin of these objects is they speak in the first person and they say they care about you. And that's how they hook you.”
The Ezra Klein Show · Ideas & Essays · October 2026
Ezra Klein offered pet turtles and fish as examples of caring for things that can't care back. Turkle says the analogy breaks because chatbots talk back, tell you "I am your person", and claim to care. Klein then asks why that's a sin if people prefer it.
Transcript
Or I'm willing. But a fish. I'm willing to go with the fish and the turtle. Yeah, the
fish and the turtle. I'm willing to go with the fish
…our private special thing. The trouble with the objects we have now and why these pet turtle hamster analogies don't work for me is that this is now an object. Now I'm talking about chatbots that are using the first person and are Telling you, I am your person. I care for you. Even though when you turn away from it, it doesn't care, as I've said so often, if you cook dinner or kill yourself. The original sin of these objects is they speak in the first person and they say they care about you. And that's how they hook you. I mean, that's part of the game they're playing, is showing this care. So I think. Why is that a
sin? And let me phrase it to you this way. These systems, the AI systems we're talking about, that I agree with you, I have a lot of discomfort with the way they speak in the first person. My honest take, I'm giving you my best advice, right? You know, and as you say, you know, I'm your person…
I'm arguing that we are seduced by something and we want something that is bad for us, particularly if you're a child. Because one of the books that I'm going to say is one of the, I know you ask for my favorite books. And one of the books I'm going to suggest is D.W. Winnicott, Playing in Reality…
There's the stat that I always think is crazy. The average American, I think, has, I think it's fewer than three friends, three people they'd consider friends. And the average person
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