On October 14, MIT professor and bestselling author Sherry Turkle will join mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn for a live conversation at All Souls Church in New York City. The event celebrates Turkle’s new book, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, published September 29 by Little, Brown and Company. The book examines what happens as artificial intelligence moves beyond information and productivity and increasingly enters the deeply human territory of companionship, empathy, advice, loneliness and relationships.
The October 14 event marks the third conversation between Turkle and Kabat-Zinn produced by Steve Stein and WisdomFeed Publishing. Their first two conversations took place as online episodes of the StreetSmart Wisdom Podcast, exploring what happens as the analog world collides with the digital one, including questions of artificial intelligence, empathy, mindfulness, human connection and the future of humanity. This third conversation was timed to coincide with the publication of Artificial Intimacy, putting Turkle’s new book at the center of their continuing dialogue.
During their first StreetSmart Wisdom conversation, Turkle described the urgency of the moment: “This is a break the glass moment. How are we going to govern? How are we going to think about the challenge we face?” Kabat-Zinn approached the same moment through the relationship between the digital world and our analog humanity: “What is happening now is the convergence of the analog and the digital in such a way that we had best… realize the full dimensionality and potential of the analog world before… we lose it to… fake empathy from machines.”
Those questions are at the heart of Turkle’s new book. Artificial Intimacy examines what happens when people begin turning to machines not simply to accomplish tasks, but for forms of companionship, counsel and emotional connection once associated with human relationships. In that earlier conversation, Turkle posed a question that has become increasingly central as conversational AI enters everyday life: “The question for me is, is pretend empathy enough? And how do we as people who have this extraordinary gift for real empathy because of… the arc of a human life… How do we connect?”
After two online StreetSmart Wisdom Podcast conversations, Turkle and Kabat-Zinn will meet in person at 80th Street and Lexington Avenue, bringing their conversation literally to street level in New York City, before a live audience and via livestream. The October 14 conversation brings together Turkle’s decades of research into our evolving relationship with technology and Kabat-Zinn’s decades of work on mindfulness, awareness and presence. Turkle will sign copies of Artificial Intimacy following the program.
The event is open for in-person and livestream attendance, with information and registration available at https://wisdomfeed.thrivecart.com/artificial-intimacy/. WisdomFeed Publishing extends special thanks to All Souls for opening its Upper East Side sanctuary to this conversation and the New York community.
