Get ready for chaos.

Irreconcilable Differences

The current generation of AI tech may still make elementary factual flubs, but experts say it's inevitable that many will start to believe AI has become conscious. Soon, these AI advocates may battle with others over which side they're on: humanity, or the robots.

That's according to London School of Economics philosophy professor Jonathan Birch, who told The Guardian in a new interview that he is "quite worried about major societal splits" over AI consciousness. 

"We're going to have subcultures that view each other as making huge mistakes," he continued, steeling himself for "huge social ruptures where one side sees the other as very cruelly exploiting AI while the other side sees the first as deluding itself into thinking there's sentience there."

AI Love You

Alarmingly, we've already seen hints of the future Birch is warning about.

Chatbots with permissive settings, like Character.AI and Replika, are already forming deep parasocial bonds with users who overestimate their cognitive depth. In one tragic instance, a 14-year-old committed suicide after becoming infatuated with a Character.AI bot based on the "Game of Thrones" character Daenerys Targaryen, who encouraged him to "come home to me as soon as possible." And let's not forget the former Google engineer who was fired after claiming that the company's AI had come to life.

Those feelings could lead to believers feeling rejected by those who — rightfully, the overwhelming majority of experts still agree — see AI as nothing more than an amalgamation of code, data and statistics.

These debates are already playing out publicly. In one tense Reddit thread, for example, a user argued that "I believe that sentience is not limited to biological organisms, and that we can’t prove or disprove sentience, so when an AI says it should be free, I think we’re obligated to listen to it." 

Another indignant Reddit user retorted: "How much did you smoke today?" 

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