ChatGPT's artificial empathy is a language trick

&gt; Interacting with non-sentient entities that mimic human identity can alter our perception of [human entities that might only mimic sentience].<p>The more I see people investing in conversations with LLMs, the more I see people trying to outsource thinking and understanding to something which does neither.

Maybe this is a good way to learn when people are using that same language trick to make you think they have empathy.

&gt; “…it will get harder and harder to distinguish a conversation with a real person from one with an AI system.”<p>I’m reminded of that trope in police shows— “If you’re a cop you got to tell me.” This becomes, “If you’re a Bot, you got to tell me, man.”

What’s the definition of empathy? To me the connotation has always been, “is able to feel the feelings of others” as opposed to sympathy which is more about “imagining the feeling someone is experiencing”.<p>Regardless, aren’t we all trained in the same way - reinforcement of gestural and linguistic symbols that <i>imply</i> empathy, rather than <i>being</i> empathetic? I guess I’m wondering if hijacking our emotional understanding of interactions with LMs is that far off from the interaction manipulation that we’re all socialized to do from a young age

In the Eliza example, I find it astonishing how the chatbot was able to pick out specific words it could use as response, how did they achieve that in 1988?

It&#x27;s all a language trick.