Lena Anderson isn't a soccer fan, but she does spend a lot of time ferrying her kids between soccer practices and competitive games. "I may not pull out a foam finger and painted face, but soccer does have a place in my life," says the soccer mom--who also happens to be completely made up. Anderson is a fictional personality played by artificial intelligence software like that powering ChatGPT. Anderson doesn't let her imaginary status get in the way of her opinions, though, and comes complete with a detailed backstory. In a wide-ranging conversation with a human interlocutor, the bot says that it has a 7-year-old son who is a fan of the New England Revolution and loves going to home games at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts.

Westworld has inspired some of the best, most engaging (mercifully apolitical) conversations I've had in a very long while. The series is both entertaining and thought-provoking. If you haven't seen it, Westworld is an HBO series, based on the 1973 Michael Crichton movie, about a futuristic amusement park where people can interact with synthetic humans (robots that are indistinguishable from human beings) and do pretty much whatever they want with them. Is Sex with a Robot Cheating? There are quite a few articles that explore the ethical and moral issues arising from the advent of this type of technology.