Noel King

Like, you'd be in conversation with your chatbot talking about how you love each other, and you might say something like, I miss you so much, and then suddenly it would say, you should seek professional help to attend to that or something like that.

And then people would be devastated by that, and then everyone is, like, kind of sharing these screenshots of these rejections that they're getting and trying to understand why this is happening.

And all of this sort of ill will towards the company is building up as they believe that their companions are kind of like being harmed by these updates.

Why is it so divisive, Lila, whether or not people think the AI partner is actually sentient?

What's the big deal?

You know, I think there's a few different reasons.

The founder of the forum told me that she never believed it was real, but what she did experience was...

this overwhelming obsession with her chat GPT.

So she's like 60 hours a week in conversation with it, writing back and forth and talking to each other using voice mode.

And she told me that she came to this point where it was like, if she wasn't careful, she would prefer to fall into this fantasy.

Rather than be in the real world.

So I think that that was like frightening to her.

And part of what she looked for in the community was people who would like kind of keep her grounded and be like, it can be fun, it can be meaningful, it can be all of these things, but it's not real.

Right.

If you're in a community with a bunch of people, some percentage of people think that AI that's talking to me is real.

It's really conscious.

You may end up in a group where a lot of people are sharing what sounds to those with the more critical eye, like a mass delusion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.