ChatGPT is not a human. It is not a friend. A conversation with it is not a conversation at all, but a feedback loop in which much of what we say is cheerfully reinforced.

The illusion itself is not the core concern. Those discussing ChatGPT often invoke its distant ancestor, the Eliza “psychotherapist” chatbot developed in 1967 that produced a similar illusion. By modern standards Eliza was primitive: it generated responses via simple heuristics, often rephrasing input as a question or making generic comments.... See more