Whitney Rodgers

TED curator and award-winning journalist who hosts and interviews speakers for TED conversations, including events on AI, intimacy, relationships, technology, public affairs, and social change. Before joining TED as current affairs curator, she produced for NBC News programs including Dateline NBC.

AI Can Support Human Connection, but It Cannot Replace Reciprocity

AI companionship has moved from fringe behavior into ordinary emotional life, touching romance, parenting, work and grief, sextech expert Bryony Cole argues. Her concern is not that AI intimacy must be rejected, but that people should decide deliberately whether these systems help build human connection or begin to replace the friction, reciprocity and presence that relationships require.

TEDMay 17, 202612 min read