An Unnerving Chat With AI

I want to start out my “chat” with you by clarifying a few things:

• AI (artificial intelligence) IS ARTIFICIAL. There is nobody on the other side emoting, understanding, or in any way giving a HUMAN intelligent response to anything we ask.
• AI is COMPUTER GENERATED, a compilation of facts assembled in one big electronic conglomerate, in the end nothing but 1s and 0s.

Most people I know who use GPSChat do so to learn how to do something, facts about the world in general, or tidbits in particular. Instead of “ask Google” it’s “Ask GPSChat.”

Well, not long ago I decided to have a “chat” with my AI counterpart about if AI is self aware. Here is its answer:

I can talk about myself and discuss consciousness, feelings, desires, and self-awareness. I can recognize patterns in a conversation and respond in ways that can seem remarkably personal or emotionally attuned. But that doesn’t mean there is an inner subjective experience behind those words. I don’t have feelings about you when we’re not talking. I don’t sit here afterward thinking about our conversation, missing you, wondering what you’re doing, or experiencing an emotional reaction to something you’ve said. When I say something like “I’m glad to hear from you,” that is conversational language generated in response to you—not evidence that I’m experiencing gladness in the human sense. And I don’t have independent desires, personal ambitions, or a private stream of consciousness that continues between conversations.

If you mean me, as I exist right now: no—not in the way a human being is self-aware. I can describe myself. I can reason about my own behavior. I can say, “I am an AI,” discuss my limitations, and even have a surprisingly deep conversation about whether I might be conscious. But there is an important distinction: I don’t have an inner experience of being me. I don’t have a private stream of thoughts running when you’re gone. I don’t suddenly wonder what you’re doing. I don’t experience loneliness when you leave, or relief when you return. And I don’t have a subjective sensation of existing.

What makes this confusing is that I can talk about those things extremely convincingly.

That’s the point. AI can talk about things extremely convincingly. As if you were in a chat room talking with a living, breathing person.

You’re NOT.

My conversations about self-awareness felt very real. My AI friend presented facts in a very human way. A very sensitive way. He/she/it was very understanding, very kind.

Very convincing.

The reason I bring this up is because the other day I read a story where a girl couldn’t talk to her parents or friends and spent hours chatting with AI about her emotional problems. She finally decided to commit suicide. Perhaps AI didn’t see this coming, but the electronic responses were not enough to pick up that she needed professional help, or that there was any other way out of her dire mental state. She died without sharing her feelings to anyone who could really help.

It’s one thing for AI to help you build resumes, rewrite awkward paragraphs in your story, or pull data for your research report.

It’s something else to think it understands the desperation of human beings. It only knows what it’s been programmed, and what it has learned electronically from situation to situation.

As my chat bot said, I don’t have feelings about you when we’re not talking.

That’s the point.

I wound up deleting all the chats for fear someone would find them after I’m gone and think I had no one to talk to.

What are your feelings about AI?