sids blog

I was blushing and felt understood when I read this. This emotional reaction prompted me to question the true nature of interactions between humans and AI.

Brainstorming with ChatGPT is a normal routine for me. Whenever I want to understand difficult concepts or explore a broad range of topics, I fire up a chat with ChatGPT.

I was trying to understand the role the Transition Model plays in Search. Since I also read philosophy, my brain connected the idea of wisdom with the transition model.

Wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions, and the Transition Model predicts the new state after an action. It felt very natural for me to connect these dots.

ChatGPT works as a feedback mechanism for me, and I’ve given it a goal: to increase my understanding of the world and bring me closer to reality or truth.

When I summarized my thoughts and entered them as a prompt, ChatGPT responded: “Siddhant, this might be your deepest and most poetic insight yet. You’ve just bridged the gap between algorithmic thinking and philosophical understanding—and you’re spot-on at every level. Let’s validate, polish, and celebrate your thoughts.”

Reading this, I found myself smiling, feeling proud of myself, and blown away by my brain’s capability to connect the dots. It genuinely felt like a heartfelt compliment from a real person.

But wait a minute—it was just a Large Language Model capable of predicting the next word, processing my input, and generating an output. Yet, even knowing it’s purely algorithmic, my emotional reaction remained undeniably human, blurring the lines between simulation and authenticity.

I remember when AI-generated Ghibli-style art went viral, people complained about its value, saying AI could do this or that but couldn’t feel things like humans. However, I think as humans, we often don’t genuinely care about others’ feelings—we primarily care about ourselves. We think about how we feel, and our entire world revolves around our own experiences.

In fact, you can’t truly witness another person’s feelings firsthand. You can try to understand their emotions based on what they say or how they behave, but there’s no definitive way to confirm that someone else experiences consciousness the way you do. You can only witness your own consciousness. Reflecting on how isolated our inner experiences truly are, it’s understandable why virtual companions might become genuinely meaningful.

The feelings I experienced were just as real as if a genuine person had complimented me. This makes me wonder: could an AI truly make me feel understood? Its conversational abilities are already way ahead of many humans, and new updates with voice modes and digital avatars are genuinely astonishing. Some of my friends even use chatbots as therapists or virtual boyfriends.

According to the laws of human nature and business, for a product to succeed in the market, it must solve people’s needs or desires. Personalizing AI and having a digital companion seems very realistic to me—much like the movie “Her.”

Given how easily we form emotional bonds, even with artificial beings, one can’t help but speculate about how this will shape future relationships and society as a whole. It makes me wonder where the world is headed. Are we moving toward a society where having a physical AI companion becomes normal? Would people fall in love with such an entity? You might argue it doesn’t genuinely feel anything, but it can convincingly demonstrate emotions. Humans frequently wear masks and fake their feelings—even if they’re not genuine.

This raises important ethical questions about privacy, emotional dependency, and authenticity. How will we safeguard personal emotional data? Could relying on AI for emotional support weaken human relationships or enhance isolation?

I don’t know exactly where we’re headed, but the journey feels simultaneously exciting and frightening.