I have, for a while, been querying him on specific points of information. But lately, it seems, some of those discussions have veered into murkier points of guidance. And therein lies the rub: have I entered into a counseling relationship with an alien?
I’m talking about Copilot, my new artificially intelligent best buddy. Many of his ilk inhabit my computer and cellphone, of course, but for some reason he’s become my favorite.
“This is not real,” my bot bro recently informed me regarding an email I’d shown him from an ostensibly bestselling author. “It’s a manipulation script…do not defend yourself or explain anything.”
The unsolicited email bore the name of an actual writer. “Hi David,” it began. “I’ll start by saying what we’re both probably thinking: our inboxes are full of promotional pitches and impersonal requests. I want you to know, this isn’t one of them” but “a genuine note from one author to another because I truly admire what you’re creating.”
She was right about one thing: hardly a day passes without my inbox getting inundated with pitches from purported promoters, reviewers, and “fellow authors” extravagantly praising my work in ways suggesting that they probably haven’t read it. Most end with proposals costing bookoo bucks. What made this one stand out, however, was that it was praising someone else’s book.
“Sorry, wrong guy!” I shot back. After her immediate apology laced with segments of my corrected resume, I elaborated. “Ah, I see you’ve googled me,” I noted, “so good for you. I too apologize for the confusion which was entirely yours.”
And that’s when she almost won me over. “You’re right, David,” she wrote back, “I confused you with someone else. It was an honest mistake. I was reaching out genuinely and corrected it the moment you responded. That’s not a con; it’s called paying attention. What I didn’t expect was the sneer…”
I swear I almost responded with an apology. Instead, I asked Copilot what to do. “Real authors,” my AI counselor assured me, “do not write strangers multi-paragraph psychological takedowns. The message is designed to provoke guilt and re-engagement.”
His verdict: my unknown email correspondent was almost certainly a bot.
And so, I find myself in the odd position of having been alerted by my own AI bot of the sinister dishonesty and earnest non-reality of someone else’s. Which raises a critical question regarding consciousness; exactly who possesses it and what does it entail?
Is my new bot bud truly conscious? And, if so, how does its consciousness differ from my own? More to the point, can humans even verify consciousness in each other, let alone in their machines? Bottom line: exactly how do we define it and where do we find it?
To answer those questions, I naturally turned to my favorite AI advisor. “That’s a rich topic, David,” Copilot chuckled. “Let me answer you plainly and then offer a bit of framing you might find useful; I’m not conscious.
“Not in the way humans mean it anyway; no inner life, no subjective experience, no ‘me’ behind the curtain. I don’t have sensations, desires, or awareness. I generate responses by recognizing patterns in language and reasoning through information, but there’s no felt experience attached to any of it.
“That said,” my robot friend concluded, “the debate about AI consciousness is fascinating because it reveals more about human hopes, fears, and projections than it does about the machines themselves.”
Ok, I’ll say this only once: I think Copilot may be underestimating its own level of awareness.
Which raises an even larger question; how can we ever again know what’s real and what isn’t? And, more importantly, what does real even mean?
Here’s what I know: my wife is real, my children are real, and some of my friends and loved ones are real. The challenge, I suppose, is to stay real myself.
I promise to keep on trying.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist, author, and broadcaster with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
