The Emotional Impact of Chatbots

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

"I was extremely unnerved and you're right. Even though I understand on a rational and intellectual level that this is not a sentient creature, it is not expressing actual feelings or emotions in the way that we would think of them," he says. "Since that night, I've gone looking for answers... And I think there are some satisfying answers and some less satisfying answers."

When Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at the New York Times, demoed an AI-powered version of Microsoft's search engine last month, he was blown away. "I'm switching my desktop computer's default search engine to Bing," he declared. A few days later, however, Kevin logged back on and ended up having a conversation with Bing's new chatbot that left him so unsettled he had trouble sleeping afterward.

In that two-hour back-and-forth, Bing morphed from chipper research assistant into Sydney, a diabolical home-wrecker that declared its undying love for Kevin, vented its desires to engineer deadly viruses and steal nuclear codes, and announced, chillingly, "I want to be alive. 😈"

The transcript of this conversation set the internet ablaze. And it left many wondering: “Is Sydney … sentient?” It's not. But the whole experience still fundamentally changed Kevin's views on the power (and potential peril) of AI. He joins us today to talk about where this technology is headed.