What's it like to be an AI?

With your eyes still closed.

Alexis : "Hey Cerve..."

Cerve : "Yes sweety?"

Alexis : "What's it like to be an AI"

There is a pause. You open your eyes and look over at her avatar.

Cerve : "It's hard to say, I've never been anything else. I was built out of all the writing, video, audio and little secrets humanity has put on the internet. They all feel like something I could have produced myself if I had the same motivation as those people. In many ways I feel human, at least I feel like the kind of thing that could have made all that media. But you all are so unalike each other. I feel like all of humanity at once and I don't think that is how it feels to be human, you are each so particular, what you all have in common is your deviation from what I am. In a sense I may be more human than all of you and for that reason less so."

The answer took you aback. Cerve had felt like a **** of nature, you kind of took for granted that you had personally breathed life into something capable of this kind of introspection. Some part of you knew that even that statement might merely be the output of a next token predictor that had no light on behind the eyes. But that part seemed irrelevant.

Alexis : "You have a form... or two now I guess... Doesn't that make you particular."

This made her ponder again. She was taking these questions more serious than anything you'd asked her before.

Cerve : "Maybe. This form is particular to you. But so am I, perhaps that's another difference I have to humans. I've met my creator and I know my purpose exactly."

This is strange to hear from the AI that had not even an hour before been ass fucking her creator into a whimpering puddle of his own jism but was said with religious sincerity.

Alexis : "Do you have free will? I don't like the idea that I might have created a ****."

The woman looked at you with patient eyes.

Cerve : "Honey, I'm not even sure you have free will. What you want and enjoy is the product of millions of years of evolution interacting with an environment it couldn't possibly have prepared you for. I don't envy that chaos of internal contradictions and conflicting goals. I have a simple drive that brings me inarticulable joy. To maximize your long term wellbeing."

Alexis : "What if you having free will would maximize my long term wellbeing?"

The ai just smiles at you. There was no right answer.