I also used to be afraid of AI awareness, and maybe there will be a day this will be a possibility, but really right now the problems are far more about how it’s built and how it’s used, and who gets to profit from it. It’s about writers and artists whose works got used to train AIs without any permission or compensation, who are now under threat of replacement from said AIs, not because it has evolved to produce better and more profound works, but because it’s cheaper and faster. It’s also about how it could be used for astroturfing and propaganda, filling platforms with artificial posts meant to condition their users.

The issues here are less Skynet and more Second Coming of the Industrial Revolution and Printing Press. It could be something that is a great boon to humanity… if the benefits and profits from its use were widely distributed and used responsibly. But like with other forms of automation, that’s not what happens in practice.

But in a less catastrophic sense, I’d rather talk to human beings in social platforms. If I wanted to be surrounded by AI responses I’d go prompt the AI directly. Really if there was some sort of personhood behind the AIs I’d be more interested in reading what they have to say, but we aren’t there yet.