Can We Be Friends With Chatbots?

​What will happen when a crisis of youth disconnection & loneliness meets a world shaped by AI? In the last two years, we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of AI companions. They take a range of forms — virtual boyfriends, math tutors, research guides, therapists, video-game playmates. Reid Hoffman asserts that we’re not far from a future when “everyone’s going to have their own personal intelligent assistant that will be a companion as they navigate life.” Already we are seeing this technology disrupt schools, the internet, jobs, and any number of tenets of life as we know it. There is no question that it will reshape the way we relate to ourselves and others. But how?

WITH: Michelle Culver, (she/her), Founder Reinvention Lab @TFA; Julia Freeland Fisher (she/her), Director of Education at Clayton Christensen Institute