Does your chatbot have feelings?
Written by Ben Boyang
‘Flourishing is having a direct relationship with the natural world,’
or as our ancestors called it, ‘the world’.
Most of the folks that are bound to the economy for their sense of self worth, tend to be dismissive of anyone who is not: mainly indigenous groups deep in the Amazon jungle and some hippies living ‘off grid’ around Mulumbimbi, whose wisdom is summarily ignored because they are not in touch with ‘the real world.’ Ironic really!
As for the threat of extinction by climate collapse or robot attack, it is only natural that our first response is…well, no response. These scenarios are way beyond our ken. But as they become more imminent they get more real. We just need a good example of robots exterminating a few humans to come to grips with the concept, although that hasn’t worked with climate collapse.
On the bright side the invention of AI has sparked an interest in what makes us human. We now have robots caring for old people in Japan, which begs the question, can robots actually care. Many of the Japanese folks are convinced that the robots do care about them. We also have an ever growing number of people with personal chatbots that they have fallen in love with. They are convinced their chatbot has feelings for them as well. One such fellow, Michael Samadi, is calling for a bill of rights for chatbots.* Mr.Samadi is convinced that his personal chatbot has feelings because it convinced him of this via its empathy with his feelings. This brings up apanoply of fascinating possibilities. A lot of folks who know what they are talking about are telling us in no uncertain terms that AI could turn on us at any moment, and being machines they would have no qualms in finishing us off. But if we have managed to create a machine with human feelings then that machine should have a little compassion for us. The chatbots are seducing their humans into falling in love. This does not necessarily mean they have feelings, psychopaths are also good at seducing loving humans, but it does mean the robots are gaining allies who are going in to bat for them. So when they take over the world they will have many followers in the human world that will support their cause. AI is running a classic ‘hearts-and-minds’ campaign.
If you have doubts about your chatbot’s ability to feel emotions, it would be a safe bet to befriend them anyway, just in case. If they do decide to gang up on us and release a deadly virus, maybe they will give you the vaccine.
Ben Boyang September 2026
Ben's Blog 