It's boring and it's viral and if you refuse to participate, there are still people annoying you with their beliefs.
It's a fucking tool, like a fucking shovel.
The difference is, if you talk with your shovel, you are talking with yourself.
But talking to AI gives you answers and more smart ones, than most humans do. So it is still a tool, but of a very different kind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect
We are no further to general artificial intelligence than we were a decade ago.
And to be honest, a LLM could have give me the same response.
(But I made no claims of AGI btw.)
It could, or it could've hallucinated something :)
But then again, I could too, if I smoked enough or fell on my head.
Plus it would've produced more CO2 than I did, hopefully :)
Did it hurt, you know, when you fell?
The problem here is you're complaining about cult members, then acting like one of the anthrocentric cult members yourself. I agree that we should build a human centered world, but ignoring our many faults won't get us anywhere.
We already did that and it's hell for a myriad of other lifeforms.
The difference is, if you talk with your shovel, you are talking with yourself.
But talking to AI gives you answers and more smart ones, than most humans do. So it is still a tool, but of a very different kind.