How To Practice Being Human (Dr. Sherry Turkle)

Our problem isn't that Artificial Intelligence is getting better at being human, it's that human beings are getting worse at it. That's one of the conclusions that MIT psychologist Dr. Sherry Turkle, who has been studying the psychological impact of technology on its users since the dawn of the internet. One of the foremost researchers on the "soft side" of technology, her early work was optimistic about the power of the internet to enable healthy personal and cultural experimentation. Her recent work is still optimistic, though it comes with a very significant "but." We cannot be passively accepting of our new technologies: that way lies madness and ruin, or at least verifiable misery. Instead she says that the challenge of our new technology is not just to manage it better, but to practice being human the face of it.