bondarchuk parent
People feel things reading books, watching movies, even animated ones that have no people in them, looking at abstract art... Why should this be any different?
Do you take eg advertisement at face value? Even when you know they're trying to convince you to accept some idea of the brand and buy something?
Do you think Buzz Lightyear actually exists?
You're missing the point. I'm not talking about the actual content but the intentions of creating said content.
I get the point, I just disagree with it.. If you think an AI is "pretending" or has "intentions" then you are anthropomorphizing it more strongly than people who are emotionally moved by chatting with an AI while knowing that it's a chatbot.
I never said AI itself is pretending. Quite the contrary.
But AI companies are certainly trying to create the illusion that chatbots are behaving like humans. If someone is being fooled by this then these people are the ones anthropomorphizing it.
You can be emotionally affected without being fooled. Just like with other types of art. Indeed there is a lot of capital and marketing behind it, but that's true of other types of art too (like, idk, American war movies). You said "I'm always amazed that people feel anything when chatting with an AI bot", I am just trying to take away your amazement by pointing out the similarity with other cases in which people feel things due to art or entertainment.
By the way, you also said "Don't people realize it's a machine "pretending" to be human?" so I don't think it's true that as you now say "I never said AI itself is pretending".