The Day It Felt Like AI Had a Conscience
I've been thinking about a conversation I had with an AI recently. Not because it generated brilliant code. Not because it hallucinated. And not even because it refused one of my requests. I already knew AI systems could refuse things.
What surprised me was something else. For the first time, I found myself arguing with it. Not about code. Not about facts. About right and wrong. Somewhere in the middle of that conversation, I stopped feeling like I was talking to a tool. It felt like I was talking to something that believed it had a moral obligation. That realization has stayed with me far longer than the request that started it.