Introducing the AI Mirror Test, which very smart people keep failing - The Verge

Add to this our culture's obsession with intelligent machines and you can see why more and more people are convinced these chatbots are more than simple software. Last year, an engineer at Google, Blake Lemoine, claimed that the company's own language model LaMDA was sentient (Google said the claim was "wholly unfounded"), and just this week, users of a chatbot app named Replika have mourned the loss of their AI companion after its ability to conduct erotic and romantic roleplay was removed. As Motherboard reported, many users were "devastated" by the change, having spent years building relationships with the bot. In all these cases, there is a deep sense of emotional attachment -- late-night conversations with AI buoyed by fantasy in a world where so much feeling is channeled through chat boxes.