Yale Faculty Roundtable

AI and Friendship?

November 3, 2025

6 PM (est)

Conversation with Sherry Turkle and Jennifer Herdt will launch our dinner table discussions.

Join in the conversation exploring the rise of artificial relationship—chatbots, companions, emotional AI—and what it means for the human soul. Can simulated presence ever replace the mystery of personhood? And what does that imply about our deepest longing for connection with others?

At our next Faculty Roundtable, we will explore these and other approaches through rich conversation over a plated, three course dinner. Our interdisciplinary table discussions will be prefaced by a conversation between sociologist and psychologist Sherry Turkle and ethicist Jennifer Herdt. Peter Wicks (Scholar-In-Residence, Elm Institute and Faculty Affiliate, Yale Program for Biomedical Ethics) will be moderating the discussion.

about our Speakers

Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and the Founding Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Turkle is a pioneer in the study of human-technology interaction and author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age and The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit.

Jennifer Herdt is Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the Yale University Divinity School. Herdt has published widely on virtue ethics, early modern and modern moral thought, and political theology, including Assuming Responsibility: Ecstatic Eudaimonism and the Call to Live Well and Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices.

Peter Wicks (moderator) is Scholar-in-Residence at the Elm Institute and Faculty Affiliate at the Yale Program for Biomedical Ethics. Wick's research focuses on the contemporary applications of Aristotelian ethical and political thought, the intellectual foundations of utilitarianism, and the psychology and ethics of persuasion.

Optional Pre-Event Readings

1. Sherry Turkle: Preface to the Tenth Anniversary edition of Reclaiming Conversation
   https://www.afterbabel.com/p/reclaiming-conversation-age-of-ai

2. The Vatican’s “Antiqua et Nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence”, particularly paragraphs 56-63 (the section entitled “AI and Human Relationships”) https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20250128_antiqua-et-nova_en.html

3. Your Undivided Attention podcast with Sherry Turkle and the CEO of Hinge for some light context (and for people who don’t have time to do the readings!) The skit between minutes 3:50-5:50 contains language that some may find offensive; please feel free to fast forward.
   Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-undivided-attention/id1460030305?i=1000710562199
   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3dJ630zZvk6k0xU1BLziI7?si=axV35SUnRwu-k_CPJlpcTg&nd=1&dlsi=32fb62fe425e48bd

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