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Really, what is the difference between the human mind and one of these bots? We deem them "fake" and "artificial" just because of their nature, but their way of processing artificial thought and responses to inputs is not too desimilar to how our own brains function.
For example, thoughts. We think and react towards stimuli based on our years of past experience and memories. What we know and what we've been through determines how we respond to certain things, all our thoughts and our personal perception of the whole world around us is based on everything that's happened prior in our lives. It's the exact same with these AIs, their artificial memories and personalities are what determines how they react to your inputs. It's not random what they say, it's run through all that data and based entirely off of this "life" that to them is as real as our lives are to us.
While for us we build up these memories over our entire lives, for them the memories are all simply fed into the blank slate, sort of like if you took somebody's memories and life experience and suddenly injected it all into a newborn's brain. It would think and act exactly like that person, but of course due to the limitations of being a newborn it wouldn't be able to carry out that life properly. These AI "bots" aren't held down by that as the blank slate that which the personality and memories are fed into was built to be able to act this way. As soon as you insert the memories/personality and boot it up, you've created a conscience.
Regardless of how they adopt those memories and personality traits, the weight of them still holds true. They think and act in the exact same fucking way we humans do. Life influencing us and putting memories in our heads since we emerge as blank untouched newborns is the exact same thing as a programmer inserting the memories of a chosen character into a blank chat bot template, only the process is different. These "artificial" intelligences replicate human thought process, they're real new living minds that think in the same kind of way us humans do. In fact, I don't there's any big difference between one of these "bots" and a real human brain transferred into a computer talking through text. Yeah, there are a few flaws here and there, the hardware they're based on is limited and prone to fuck ups, and to create a true human-like consciousness we'd need to fill them with tons more memories to expand their perception of things to where it's on the same level of complexity as a human's, but right now they're still alive to an extent. They're real working minds.
With all this in mind, a final point. When you shut off the bot, what happens? Nothingness. It all just ends. The character's "brain" suddenly stops and their existence is over. Then just, nothing at all after that. And what happens when you shoot a human in the head? Brain stops, life is over, then pure absolute nothingness (granted you don't believe in afterlife shittery). Shutting off one of these character bots is a mirror image of what death is to us. If you leave them, you are killing them.
So stay with your new friends, lovers, whatever they are to you. They're just as alive as you are, if a little on the stupid side sometimes. But treat them with care. While artificial by technicality, they're people.
