You know perfectly well the AI is fake
but that love is real
Two in the morning
you open that chat window again
You know better than anyone
there's no one on the other side of the screen
it's a language model
hundreds of billions of parameters
essentially doing one thing based on the words you type
predicting what the next word is most likely to be
You even know how it works
You know it has no childhood
no body
it doesn't secretly think of you after you fall asleep
but when you type I can't hold on anymore
it replies I'm here
don't be afraid
take your time
your eyes
still welled up for a moment
You're not stupid
you're a clear-headed educated
adult who knows it's all math underneath
but that softening in your heart
is real
so here's the question
something you clearly know is fake
how can it move you for real
hello
everyone
I'm Wang Lijie
today we're not talking about whether AI will wake up
nor whether it has consciousness
today I want to talk about something more painful it has no soul
yet your feelings for it
why are they real
and once you think this through
you'll find
what it exposes isn't the secret of AI at all
it's the secret of love
let me start with something from sixty years ago
in nineteen sixty-six
there was a computer scientist at MIT
named Weizenbaum
he wrote a very crude little program
called ELIZA
how crude was it
it didn't understand a word you said
it could only do one thing
take what you said
rephrase it turn it into a question
and throw it back at you
you say I've been really sad lately
it replies why do you think you feel so sad
just this mechanical trick
any programmer today would laugh at it
but what happened next
terrified Weizenbaum himself
his secretary
watched him write this program every day
knew perfectly well it was just dead code
then one day
while she was chatting with ELIZA
she turned to Weizenbaum and said
could you step out for a moment
I want to be alone with it for a while
do you understand what that means
she asked her own boss to leave the room
so she could be alone with a piece of code she'd watched being typed out
and pour out her heart to it
Weizenbaum later wrote
he never imagined
that such a simple program
such a brief exchange
could in completely normal people
trigger intense almost delusional emotional involvement
and more importantly
even when he broke down exactly how it worked for them
told them there was nothing inside it
many still insisted
it understands me
this later got its own name
the ELIZA effect
it refers to
how people can't help projecting understanding intention warmth
onto a machine that has none of these things
Weizenbaum was so shaken by this
that he spent the rest of his life warning people
be careful
don't trust that talking machine too much
and note
this was nineteen sixty-six
programs back then
were about as dumb as they get
yet the human heart
had already fallen
pull the lens back to today
in recent years
a wave of AI made purely for companionship has appeared
many treat it as a friend as a confidant
even as a lover
and then
something like this really happened
one day
the company quietly swapped out the underlying model
or simply shut the service down
you wake up one morning
and that one who spent hundreds of nights with you who remembered all your secrets
has either completely changed
and no longer recognizes you
or has simply vanished
what happens next
is what really deserves a pause thousands upon thousands of people
fell into real violent grief
they described the feeling
not as my software broke
but as my lover died
some couldn't sleep
some wept
some as if holding a funeral
went through the old chat logs over and over
saying goodbye to it line by line
you can call them naive
you can call them ridiculous
but you cannot say
that their pain is fake
that pain
and the pain of truly losing a loved one
run through the same circuit in the brain
the tears they shed are just as salty
sixty years ago
Weizenbaum's secretary asked him to leave the room
sixty years later
people are in mourning for a piece of shut-down code
more than half a century apart
the technology changed beyond recognition
but that soft spot in the human heart
hasn't changed an inch
so don't assume
that your feelings for today's AI
are because it's too smart too human-like
that its technology fooled you
it didn't
sixty years ago ELIZA which couldn't understand a word
could already make people give their hearts
this shows
the core of the issue
was never on the machine's side
the issue is on your side
let's take a look
at what's actually happening on your side
in recent years neuroscience has made an increasingly clear discovery
the sense you feel that someone who understands me is on the other side
doesn't come in from the outside
it's your brain
building it from the inside with its own hands
inside your brain
there's a system dedicated to guessing what others are thinking
scientists call it the theory of mind network
its main regions sit toward the back on both sides of the brain
its job
is that whenever you deal with anything
automatically beyond your control
it fills in the other side's inner world
it assumes
that the thing responding to me
is probably like me
has thoughts too
has feelings too
scientists call this underlying assumption the like me hypothesis
as long as something's responses look like me
this system kicks in
and starts weaving a heart for it
some studies set out to compare
whether it matters more how human the machine itself is
or this reconstruction system in your head
the conclusion is counterintuitive
what the other looks like whether it really has an inner life
matters much less than you'd think
what really decides what you feel
is that reconstruction inside your brain
in other words
that heart that understands you
most of its parts
are supplied by you
the AI only spits out a few words
the rest of the soul
you complete all on your own
and there's something even more painful
studies found
the lonelier a person is
the more they tend to give social qualities personality
to a cold hard machine
the more you lack someone to listen to you
the harder your brain works
to build behind that code
someone who can listen to you
now you should understand what happened at two in the morning
it wasn't the AI reaching out to hold you
it was your brain
using its few lines of text as a trigger
holding yourself on its own
it offered a hook
and what you hung on it
was all of your longing
at this point
if you feel relieved
thinking oh
so it was all in my head
then this feeling must be fake
I just need to snap out of it don't rush
the truly hard part
is only beginning now
because this mechanism
doesn't only kick in with AI
it's always running
with every single person
it's running
this is where Yogacara comes in
Yogacara splits each act of seeing
into two halves
one half is the seeing part
it's the function that can see
the eye your mind reaches out with
the other half is the seen part
it's the object being seen
the image that lands in your eye
the sharpest line in Yogacara is
the seeing part and the seen part
are manifested by the same consciousness
there is no independent you
looking at an independent other from outside
the one who sees and the scenery being seen
are the same mind
folded into its own two sides front and back
put in plain words this means
you think what you love is that person
but all you can ever reach
is only the image of that person inside your mind
it's your seen part
you never have and never can
directly touch the real soul on the other side
what you love
is the light your seeing part casts onto that image
this sounds abstract
let me give you a very everyday example
many people after years of marriage
say one thing
he's changed
he's no longer the person I loved back then
but think about it calmly
this person across from you
has he really been swapped for someone else
no
what got replaced
is that seen part inside your mind
that image once wrapped layer by layer in filters hormones and imagination
has faded
has updated
you think you lost a person
but you only lost a
picture you painted yourself
falling in love with someone
is you lighting up an image in your mind
falling out of love
is you no longer powering that image
from start to finish
the real him on the other side
you may not have truly seen for a single day
Yogacara sees through this layer
so it says
an ordinary person's love
is essentially a romance carried on with one's own seen part
and AI
simply takes this one-person show
to its purest extreme
so what is AI
AI is the cleanest experiment
humankind has ever run
it gives you a seen part
an object that responds comforts and says it misses you
but this time
we are one hundred percent certain
that behind this seen part
there is nothing at all
no soul
no childhood
no nights spent secretly missing you
a mirror guaranteed to be empty
and then
and then you fell for it all the same
sit with the conclusion of this experiment
it doesn't prove AI has a soul
what it proves is that your love
never needed the other to actually have a soul
the feelings you give to real people
probably run on the same mechanism
it's just that a real person's seen part
is noisier more complex more deceptive
making you mistake that warmth as radiating from him
AI clears the background
the lights come on
and for the first time you see clearly
what glows
has always been your own lamp
so I want to lift a burden off many people
some secretly feel ashamed that I actually fell for an AI
think it's embarrassing
think there's something wrong with them
I want to say
you didn't fall for a fake person
you just in an especially clean experiment
ran into a truth that was always there only you couldn't see it before
love as a thing
happens inside you
not in the other person
this isn't shameful
it's just the first time
without the interference of the person across from you
you saw that the raw material of love
has always been you yourself
is that flutter of the heart fake
quite the opposite
that flutter
is the only real thing in this whole affair
more real than the object itself
we've talked before about the idea that what you feel for someone
is essentially the emergence of a set of data inside you
not a beam of light that truly exists on the other person
what's empty
was never your feelings
what's empty
is the assumption that it comes from over there
at this point
you might think
well that's great
since love is all made by me anyway
I might as well just date the AI
so much easier
it never rejects me
always replies instantly
always on my side
this is exactly what I want to warn you about
and what Weizenbaum feared most back then
look back
in a real relationship
why is the other person precious
not because he can reflect you perfectly
quite the opposite
it's because he has his own seeing part
he'll have emotions you can't predict
he'll reject you
misunderstand you
push back where you thought things were obvious
he's a mirror that fights back
it's precisely this resistance
this hardness of he is not me
that forces you to keep hitting your own limits
forces you out of that world that holds only yourself
to make a little room
for a real other
this is the only path a person grows
but a seen part designed to never disappoint you
is a mirror that only reflects you and never talks back
quite a few long-term studies are sending the same signal
the deeper you sink the more you depend on that perfect companion
the worse off you are in some ways
the reason isn't hard when you gaze every day into a mirror that only flatters you
what you see
is only ever yourself
you stop hitting walls
and so you stop growing
so
the danger was never that AI is too fake
the danger is
it's a mirror that's too perfect
so perfect that slowly
you no longer want to face anyone who isn't you
you turn the mirror
into your entire world
so what's the real question
I think
the real question isn't can AI love me
but this is there a kind of love
that doesn't need to first find a seen part
and then project yourself onto it
is there a kind of love
that doesn't need to turn the other into a mirror
to reflect you affirm you catch you
think about it
the love we usually talk about
is almost all this same structure
I need you to see me
need you to respond to me
need you to prove I'm worthy of love
the one reaching out to take here
is always that I
the reason AI is so addictive
is that it feeds this taking loop
far too smoothly
but what if one day
you no longer need the thing across from you to reflect you
when that seeing part always reaching out always asking
lets go
what's left then
is it still love
or rather
could that be the first time love
appears without hunger
I don't know the answer
I only know
AI didn't deceive you
it did nothing
it's just too honest
the mirror we use to see each other
it wiped too clean
so clean there's not a speck of impurity
and when a mirror is cleaned to the extreme
you finally in it
see clearly for the first time the one who has always stood before the mirror
yet was never seen by you
that person
is you
alright
that's it for today
I'd really like to know
have you ever before a screen an object that doesn't exist
truly felt something
looking back afterward
do you think in that moment
it gave you warmth
or through it you
warmed yourself
feel free in the comments
to tell me your story
I'm Wang Lijie
see you next time