This quote from Consider Phlebus made me think of LLMs and the future of them being able to mimic us. Would you want to talk to an LLM that pretended to be a deceased relative? What if it was indistinguishable? Would you follow all LLMs on Nostr in such a scenario?

…[Changers] were a threat to identity, a challenge to the individualism even of those they were never likely to impersonate. It had nothing to do with souls or physical or spiritual possession; it was, as the Idirans well understood, the behavouristic copying of another which revolted. Individuality, the thing which most humans held more precious than anything else about themselves, was somehow cheapened by the ease with which a Changer could ignore it as a limitation and use it as a disguise.

Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas (Culture, no. 1)

#bookquotes #bookstr #ConsiderPhlebus #Culture