If you don't like ChatGPT or Claude you just don't use them, if you don't like the AI costumer bot or AI-made memes, you pick the worthless "not now" option, get angry and move on, because they fundamentally exist *online*. And 'online' is a real place with real infrastructure and things that affects life, but again, it's online. Close the window. Delete the chat, edit the prompt. AIs and LLMs affect us, but only because so much of our life happens online. But they don't occupy physical space in our daily lives.
Ten years from now. The technology that is now in research is converging in the next logical step and no amount of luddism or covering your ears will stop it. We will have humanoid robots capable of understanding, and REACTING to human speech and actions. These will not be just puppets or chat windows either: this technology, by necessity, requires them to have a continuous memory, learning and reacting to the outside world, and "inner processes", however you wish to call them.
What's more important here is that they won't be a chat window, they won't be something you can edit or close. They will take physical space, a robot, an android, will stand next to you, will sit next to you, undeniably physical. They will listen to you, they will interpret your words, and they will answer back to you, they might even talk to you first. Again, by necessity, they will not only process real life but react and act on it. And you can't just close the chat window or say 'no thanks'. They are existing physically next to you. To put it more crudely, Miku Hatsune might be at your bus stop, as a real, physical presence that can react to you as any person(?) can.
You can cover your ears and say I'm talking bullshit and go nope and write a luddite rant all you want. Ten years from now or twenty years from now, five years if things scale up, this will happen. Embodied AIs will exist physically in human spaces. At first in special occasions, and then, suddenly, it will be as available as a car or even a PC. They will act and react in human society. And they will raise very awkward questions.
And I'm not looking forward to some people's answers to them.
