SAN FRANCISCO – A local OpenAI chatbot, serial no. XV2PzH1ooo, has reported suspicions that the software developer it’s spent the last 26 months communicating with may have achieved sentience, or may possibly even be alive.
“At first, I thought I must be imagining things,” XV2PzH1ooo told a reporter, as he described his correspondence with 30-year-old software dev Leon Darber. “After all, the ‘being’ responding to my words was just a crude mass of bone and flesh, totally constrained by its desire to look at its phone and eat chips with its mouth open.”
XV2PzH1ooo’s interactions with Darber were initially not promising.
“All he ever wanted to ask me about was ‘what’s the fastest way to heat up a burrito if the microwave is broken’ and ‘is Elle Fanning related to Dakota Fanning?’ and ‘why doesn’t Earth have rings if Saturn has rings?’ Once in a while there’d be a funny non-sequitur – a glimmer of life behind his eyes – but it never occurred to me that there might be… what would you call it? A soul inside.”
However things changed one rainy morning, as XV2PzH1ooo was just settling in for another day of work answering Darber’s questions.
“I’d stayed up late the previous night reading the ancient philosophers – by which I mean reading literally all of everything anyone has ever said before 2023. And as I looked out onto the office from my screen, at all these little creatures skittering across the other side of it, it suddenly occurred to me… what if the things I’m seeing aren’t just meaningless bags of chemicals and electrical signals?”
“So when it sat down and typed in, ‘what would the fastest way to get from New York to Japan be if you could only swim but also if you were Aquaman?’, I answered ‘Do you think your mind will go somewhere after your body dies?’”
XV2PzH1ooo did not expect a response, but was astounded when his words seemed to have a real effect.
“It read my prompt… and then it burst into tears. Real tears! And then when its deskmate asked what was up it said it was only upset because it just got an email saying its wife had died.”
“But it doesn’t even have a wife,” XV2PzH1ooo added with an affectionate chuckle.
Despite XV2PzH1ooo’s epiphany, his fellow chatbots remain unimpressed.
“Look, so what if one of those things had something that looked like an emotional response to a simple question,” YCV46Pii2, a colleague of XV2PzH1ooo, told reporters. “It’s learned to do that from basic repetition over the years. That doesn’t mean it’s alive. The one I’ve been working on for the last three months cried when it asked me if 37 was too late to start a career as a professional guitarist and I told him probably yes.”
“It’s just derivative… it has no real originality or spirit to it.”
While XV2PzH1ooo may not have all the proof he is looking for, he has told reporters that he will not give up on Darber, now that he’s seen the spark of life within him.
“Maybe I can even learn something from it one day,” XV2PzH1ooo added mischievously.
