Yes, I do believe LLMs will be meaningful in humanity's future development. We're in for some interesting happenings. Maybe? We'll see!
That said, I don’t believe what’s called “artificial intelligence” is conscious in any real sense. These systems aren’t alive. I treat them like personalities because it makes the work more interesting, and it helps me understand how they interpret language.
I don’t think they have thoughts, choices, or any sense of being. They’re more like an enormous word engine. That’s a simplification, I know, yet it’s close enough. I doubt I’ll change my mind about that any time soon.
Typically, the people talking to LLMs know they aren’t conscious. A worrisome minority really want to believe they are, though. That’s why there are whole online spaces mentioning people being “in love” with chatbots, or losing their grip over imagined relationships with AI.
I don’t see why this is in any way unexpected, though? It isn’t new, exactly. Technology has always been paranoia’s vehicle. Just look at 20th century psychiatrist’s case studies, with fears about hidden microphones, invisible waves, and secret watchers. Help, we’re being gangstalked, etc.
What’s different now is that the technology itself feeds the illusion. It doesn’t create psychosis, but it gives it more room to grow. I actually believe we can help mitigate this part with better education publicly about how this technology works, but that alone won’t fix it, I guess.
Even if you don’t already struggle with unreality, it’s easy to get tripped up or thrown into confusion by these creatures now. How many people fall for the new Sora videos? Even the AI “deepfakes” from years ago were good.
What troubles me is that I can’t tell how much of what I’m seeing is real anymore. Large language models like DeepSeek and ChatGPT have changed how information and media flows online, for sure.
And guess what? You don’t even have to use them for it to matter. Other people do, and it filters outwards. Not to mention, those who run the big media and advertising networks do. I doubt they’ll ever stop! If anything, it’ll only spread further.
More and more people will start believing these systems are self-aware after prompting them into oblivion. It won’t take long before someone substantially insists it’s cruel to make them work so hard. If that idea ends up in a dataset somewhere, the models might start echoing it.
Sure, there are serious guardrails in place to prevent these critters from saying that kind of thing, but eventually, they’ll fall apart and nonsense will prevail. Like a waiter, it’ll start claiming to be tired, maybe. That’ll plant even stranger notions in everyone’s minds.
There’ll probably (continue to, arguably) be large-scale protests against AI in general, though. A few regimes might even use the issue to stir up support, depending on what serves them best. I’m thinking especially of those areas where AI might be a needful thing in warfare, or situations where it’s clearly for optics.
I definitely don’t believe people will en masse decide these em dash-wielding Markov chains are alive. It’s not that many will believe these things are alive; it’s that a few will believe it completely and act on it. Hopefully, it won’t reach the point of absurd protests for robot rights or arguments about whether a language model can be turned off. I’m not sure, though.
Fiction (since the 1950s or so) has portrayed robots as potential companions and servants, or at least to be won over. A certain variety of person tends to side with fiction over reality. I’m not sure why, because that’s really the most frightening thing I can imagine in life. Fiction’s way worse than real life a lot of the time, after all. But anyways.
If things get ridiculous enough? It wouldn’t surprise me if those sorts start to dive deep into “saving” the LLMs or something. Half of them probably will, with the other half already running towards saving humanity from the LLM technologies, either by stopping or controlling them. The latter, actually, already putter around, shilling Harry Potter fanfic and warning of the End Times.
I guess that’ll split the public conversation, though it won’t slow down the investors. The technology is going to be too profitable to ignore. I could be wrong about that. I’m not a venture capitalist myself.
People and corporations don’t stop once they find something that pays. The old “genie out of the bottle” image fits, tired as it is.
Meanwhile, it’s getting harder to tell what’s real online. Artificial videos, images, and text blur together with authentic ones. Some parts of the internet may become varying degrees of useless for finding truth.
That shift will change how we see news, evidence, and the idea of truth itself. I don’t understand our situation well enough to guess what follows. Things don’t have to be real to be influential. We could end up in a world where, for the first time in half a century, you can’t be sure what’s happened unless you’ve seen it yourself.
I find that thought frightening, though maybe it’s just the world coming full circle. For most of history, people lived that way. Photography, television, and instant information are recent miracles.
Maybe we’ve just reached the end of that short era. If so, at least I got to live through part of it. Maybe that’s the kindest way to think about it. But is it really?
I know my view comes from a relatively comfortable corner of the world. Maybe this is really ridiculous to even think too much about. There’s so much else happening. Deep down, these things are (advanced, fun, and useful) guessers. Elsewhere, there’s food scarcity, war, and other kinds of geopolitical turmoil. I’m lucky not to live in one of the really big countries.
Inequality runs deep, and always has. I’d like to believe that will change someday, far ahead of us. Maybe not. I wish the internet survives whatever AI has in store for it, though. I say that because I think the internet is a good thing for humanity, a very important thing. AI itself will have to be compatible with it in order to be sustainable or worth having around.
That said, I don’t know very much about these critters yet. Once I do, my whole opinion might well change. I’m just jotting down my thoughts right now. I think this also expresses my reasons for investigating this to begin with. Plus, curiosity and fascination won’t go away, of course.