I’m Anna Sale, interviewer and host of Slate’s show Death, Sex & Money. Thanks for reading this, a weekly update on what we’re making and recommendations for others’ work that gave me pause or inspiration. I also like to know what you’re thinking, so don’t hesitate to reply.
For the last several months, you’ve been sharing your stories with us about how conversations with AI chatbots have affected your emotional lives.
In this week's episode, you hear from people for whom the tech helped during crises and transitions. Their experiences have been varied:
I didn’t set out to make an AI companion. But It’s, it’s unbelievable. It’s truly magical….
There was four weeks from the first interaction with the, to when she filed for divorce, and over those four weeks, I saw her personality change completely into someone that I no longer recognize….
It’s where I went to voice, how nobody understood what I was going through, I didn’t wanna go to my friends and family all of the time with all of these horrible, dark thoughts I could just go here and in a way like chat was there. Not only did it help me understand what it was I was actually going through, but it also helped me understand what it was I was actually going through….
You’ll hear from a parent getting tips on how to raise a teenager, an American abroad who turned to ChatGPT for grief counseling, a therapist who says Claude is better than a lot of her peers, and a husband who says AI broke up their marriage.
Listen to this week’s episode, and look out for more next week here, when we dig more into the disruptions already happening in some of your closest relationships because of chatbots, and how all of us may be at risk of “attachment hacking” from well-designed tech.
AND THERE’S MORE! Death, Sex & Money listeners sent so many long, thoughtful, and exceedingly ambivalent voice memos about their relationships with chatbots that we also made an AI confessional booth of sorts, where you hear how AI has been helpful and also the private things some of you have disclosed—and then regretted. That’s in the Slate Plus feed this week. We called that episode, “AI Confessions: I Feel Like a Hypocrite, But I Keep Going Back.” Not a Slate Plus member yet? Sign up at slate.com/dsmplus.
I interviewed Rick Steves this week, and as I prepped, I watched this 2009 episode he and his team made from Iran. Highly recommend.
“Alysa Liu’s Homecoming was hella Oakland.” A wonderful video from Oaklandside of the homecoming of the East Bay’s golden figure skater.
“Inside the Operation to Take Down Mexico’s Biggest Drug Lord,” from NYT’s The Daily. This is from a few weeks ago, but I found myself recommending it to a friend over lunch this week. I learned a lot, and also appreciated the real warmth and affection among the three Times colleagues who had all once worked out of the Mexico City bureau.
I ordered my own copy of Tom Junod’s memoir about family and American masculinity after reading Tommy Tomlinson‘s endorsement and interview with Tom here.
Until next week,
Anna
This newsletter is free to you, but let me urge you to support the Death, Sex & Money team by becoming a member of Slate Plus. What do you get? Ad-free listening and special member-exclusive podcast drops. Please join us at slate.com/dsmplus or through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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