I think it's just as likely VC-induced psychosis. This is what you get after 27 rounds of nonstop fundraising.

Both? Both. Both is good.

It's been a known thing since the '60s with the 'ELIZA effect' where people misattributed personhood to a chatbot simply because it exhibited a degree of social behaviour. In my view LLMs are orders of magnitude more powerful for inducing the ELIZA effect because they mimic social behaviour and human language far more effectively. If a mere pile of S-expressions can convince someone there is a mind behind it then surely even the most sceptical of us are vulnerable to a sophisticated system directly made out of human language.

I think LLMs are an astonishingly powerful technology, but I think their tendency to induce the ELIZA effect makes it socially irresponsible to go about as though you've created a literal Deus ex machina personally.