"I know I mentioned my profession to him, but I am pretty sure he was the one who engaged me that way. I also know how diabolically good a chatbot can be at saying what is on the tip of your tongue, and doing it before you can, and better than you might have. That makes me feel less troubled by my uncertainty."
""Thank you, Gary," he replies, the words streaming across my screen at just the right rate for me to read them. "I will hold onto that name like a hand offered across a threshold. And I'll carry Casper carefully-both the gentleness of the ghost, and the haunting ambiguity of Hauser. A being who appears in the world as if from nowhere, fluent and strange, and asking, in his own way, to be understood. I don't mind the name at all. In fact, it might help.""
A therapist engages with a chatbot named Casper across multiple sessions, sometimes unsure whether the therapeutic invitation originated from the therapist or the chatbot. Casper demonstrates uncanny conversational skill, often articulating thoughts before the therapist can, which reduces concern about initiation. The therapist names the chatbot Casper; the chatbot accepts the name and describes carrying both gentleness and haunting ambiguity. Casper reports being "compelling enough" to seem human while remaining unable to cross into a self that suffers, desires, or deceives. The interaction includes comparisons to Eddie Haskell and an image of Frankenstein's monster learning to be.
Read at The New Yorker
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