The world is changed

For most of human history, a sentence meant that someone had chosen the words.

A letter, a joke, a lie, a set of directions. Even when the words were false, there was still a person behind them.

Then you typed something into a chat box and an answer came back.

The box looked ordinary. But the answer picked up what you meant when you put it badly. It followed a thought across several replies. Perhaps it even caught a joke.

After a while, the old instinct returned. It began to feel as if there were someone on the other end.

You may have corrected yourself. It is just a computer. It does not mean anything by those words.

That may be true. But notice that the correction became necessary.

You do not have to remind yourself that a microwave is not a person.