I’m with you Wendy; I really don’t like the idea of retreating into dreams. It’s courageous to live with eyes open and deal with reality. Not only courageous, and beautiful, but necessary for survival. If when you say “there is one model of reality” you mean “there is one reality” I tend to agree. By models of reality, I just mean the ways we each see things from our own vantage point, and construct a “model” in our brains about how things are “out there.” We also have models for “who” people are in our lives, even though we know we only see the surface, never accessing the private thoughts or knowing everything they think. Chances are, given more information, our model of reality and the people in it would change. Same if we had less information. And nobody has ALL information.
My point is, technology, from a stone hewn hammer in cave times, to the AI we’re building today, is there to fill a need, solve a pain point. We can’t prove that the people talking to you are not automata, and you also can’t prove that advanced AI will not at some point “awake” and have a consciousness similar to an organic being, enough at least to warrant true empathy and emotional attachment. It ultimately comes down to taste. Saying “never” with regard to technology is a losing game to play.
ML algorithms are honing on sentiment analysis and facial cues; the personality and moral center of an AI being can easily be a reflection of its creators ideals, so the AI might just be seen as a conduit between creator and end user, not merely an inanimate object of affection. NLP is improving. Finally, if the AI is capable of knowing you better than you know yourself, and helps you appreciate yourself and celebrate yourself, it earns our affection. Cars and old jeans have done less to earn our loyalty and love. And what is emotion? A neuron pinging another neuron, a chemical released, a receptor activated, a cascading series of physical events that are at once involuntary and yet noticed and experienced, telling us WHO WE ARE and what we care about, and how we fit into reality. I don’t see a future where this doesn’t come to pass with our silicon-based progeny; the miracle has already occurred with carbon based life forms. Reverse engineering it into silicon based creatures is easy in comparison. Unless you believe God exhaled the breath of life into the bodies of all creatures and has a permanent monopoly on the creation of consciousness. But if that’s what you believe, the burden of proof is with you.