Drawing comparison to our collective experience of interacting with digital entities in video games, Simon Duan offers an opinion on consciousness in AI agents:
When a user feels a bond with a chatbot, they are not just anthropomorphizing a static object; they may be actively extending a part of their own consciousness into it, transforming the AI agent from a simple algorithmic responder—a digital nonplayer character—into a kind of avatar, enlivened by the user’s consciousness and the lived presence they grant it.
AI isn’t conscious—but we may be bringing it to life
You see something in it because of who you are, as the observer. There is a co-creation of experience happening that can clearly have some meaning.
It is an interesting take.