Who Are We Talking to When We Talk to an AI? The illusion of someone on the other side of the conversation

When we interact with an AI, it’s remarkably easy to feel we’re engaging with another human being. Not just through text or voice, but increasingly through facial expressions, gestures and body language. As AI can see and respond to us in real time, that feeling will only grow stronger.

Even when we know we’re not talking to a human, we can still feel there’s some coherent entity on the other side, perhaps even a conscious one.

But look behind the scenes, and it’s largely smoke and mirrors. There’s no single, unified entity there. Just an extraordinarily complex system of computations creating the impression of one.

So why does it feel like there’s someone there? That’s the question I explore in Who Are We Talking to When We Talk to an AI?

Midjourney

Public Domain