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News and Public Affairs
Aspen Ideas Festival

The Robotic Moment: What Happens When We Talk to Machines?

The Aspen Ideas Festival is the nation's premier, public gathering place for leaders from around the globe and across many disciplines to engage in deep and inquisitive discussion of the ideas and issues that both shape our lives and challenge our times.

The Robotic Moment: What Happens When We Talk to Machines?

Season 1 Episode 47 | 57m 37s

Machines have no friendship to offer, and yet we persist in the desire for conversation, companionship, and even communion with the inanimate. Has the simulation of empathy become empathy enough? The simulation of communion, communion enough? We are at the robotic moment not because we have made robots that are ready to be our companions but because we are willing to be theirs.

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The Aspen Institute produces the Aspen Ideas Festival in concert with its partner, The Atlantic.

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