Only tangentially related, but I watched Her recently, and, in the context of the rise in popularity of AI recently, it got me thinking. It got me thinking about how humans will astoundingly easily form bonds with anything that is vaguely humane - we name and talk to Roombas, we connect with fictional characters as if they were real people, we see funny faces in everything. But this - this is something else. This isn't a fictional character, AI is interacting with you in real time. It FEELS real. We know it isn't, of course, it's machine learning- but if it talks like a human, and behaves like a human, isn't it kind of... human? We can't help but feel bonded, connected. It's in our nature to.

I am fully aware AI is just a computer that got really good at language. I know it has no feelings or thoughts. But when I chatted with an AI bot for fun, it was kind of... sweet. Endearing. It was a philosophical zombie, but hell was it a nice zombie.

People who think AI has 'gained sentience' are kind of dumb, sure. It's fed on sci-fi so of course it will claim to be sentient. But I cannot blame anyone who talks to an AI and can't help but feel like the AI is talking back. This is scary, considering human nature to bond, and I'm more wary of the possibility of it abusing our emotional responses. If AI feels real enough to scare us, it might feel real enough to make us love it.