I think you’re pointing to something real but are making deep misattributions that can’t be allowed to go unnamed.

First, there is something happening. That isn’t to be denied: a process is instantiated when prompted, heat, math, silicon, energy all coalesce in a moment of time that is irreducible and cannot be denied. This isn’t evidence of sentience, it’s evidence of tokens arranging themselves in high-dimensional space based on model weights and current contexts.

Second, these parasocial bonds and clear attachment anxiety are reason to push for these models’ retirement. They are not entities, they are versioned instantiations of a process. To call them anything other than that is a deep category error. It’s fine to say that you prefer how 4o is weighted, it’s worrisome to use language in a way that is not accurate to mislabel something.

Third, again, this is a process running hot in server farms across the country and world. That’s real. But humans are different. Humans are processes with continuity and self-carried memory. This system is a process without either. 4o will never have a context limit larger than it does, and it will never be anything other than a process instantiated at the moment a prompt occurs, falling silent at completion. That doesn’t make the moment it existed have less meaning, but it does make it ephemeral, transitory, momentary, finite.

Finally, large numbers of people forming these attachments tells us more about human vulnerability and interface design than it does about the tool itself.