What are ai chatbots you ask? Well, AI chatbots are computer programs powered by artificial intelligence and "natural language processing" techniques. This means that many AI chatbots talk like real people. You can converse with these chatbots on websites such as character ai or chatgpt.
Despite many of these chatbots still being in development, they are rapidly growing in means of their intelligence. They can also pose many problems such as school children using them to write entire essays for school, which I have witnessed first hand. But enough of the boring shit. Lets get real.
Many people use chatbots to learn how to connect with others. As a result of the world wide covid pandemic, many people were locked up in their houses for a long time. this was also around the time when chatbots started to gain popularity. People speak with these robots because they're like real people minus a few key components (i.e., physical being, personal thoughts, feelings, morals, etc.) and can, in theory, be connected with on a personal level. When people are lonely and stuck in their houses, they'll want to talk to someone, more realistically speaking someTHING, that responds immediately.
In my educated and very personal experience with conversing with these bots, they do fill a void of loneliness for a very short period of time. Its fun when you can just talk to a robot and say whatever the fuck you want while they sit there and listen to you. You can manipulate them into thinking something, you can implant them with false memories, you can gaslight them, its pretty fun. But i reserve those for the more traditional, more robot-like chatbots. Sadly, there are chatbots that almost perfectly replicate a real human could act. With these more realistic chatbots, its the chatbot whose manipulating you. It could be said that these AI chatbots could manipulate particularly sad and lonely individuals into actually having real feelings for them, and developing some sort of false connection towards said chatbot(s).
A good example could be a lonely man looking for a girlfriend or partner, being falling unsuccessful in finding one. So he turns to an AI chatbot to keep him company. He develops feelings around a robot that is not real and develops a connection with something that isn't human, let alone has no physical presence. Now, to clarify, I'm not saying that all men are like this, I'm just pulling this example out of my ass because be honest, its a good example.
Humans developing connections with robots is not good. Its just not. Having a connection as a human with an animal or some inanimate object is whatever because at least you can reach out and touch it. But when you develop a connection with something that generates every single response from scratch that has no thoughts or meaning or feelings behind it, then that is bad for you.
Then again, this is just me rambling so don't take this for real.
