We can’t help treating AI like it’s human. But should we?

October 14, 2026

Female robot

(Tech Crunch) – “When we are drawn into even the most primitive exchanges with a relational artifact, we believe it cares for us,” Turkle writes in the book. “And we are wired to care for it in return.”

I’m not alone in my tendency to anthropomorphize robots and large language models (LLMs) — as Turkle notes, it seems to be in our nature. One study found that about 70% of people are polite when interacting with AI, while another showed that users are more likely to say “please” or “thank you” to chatbots once a conversation has progressed past a first prompt-and-response. (Read More)