AI is not happy to see you

I love this quote from Ted Chiang’s New Yorker article, “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art”:

It is very easy to get ChatGPT to emit a series of words such as ‘I am happy to see you.’ There are many things we don’t understand about how large language models work, but one thing we can be sure of is that ChatGPT is not happy to see you. A dog can communicate that it is happy to see you, and so can a prelinguistic child, even though both lack the capability to use words. ChatGPT feels nothing and desires nothing, and this lack of intention is why ChatGPT is not actually using language.

Whether “actually using langauge” is technically correct or not, we know there’s no sentiment, as we understand it, behind those generated words.