I heard some professor put googly eyes on a pencil and waved it at his class saying "HI! I'm Tim the pencil! I love helping children with their homework but my favorite is drawing pictures!"
Then, without warning, he snapped the pencil in half.
1/2
When half his college students gasped, he said "THAT'S where all this AI hype comes from. We're not good at programming consciousness. But we're GREAT at imagining non-concious things are people."
2/2
The whole time I was reading this tweet, I just kept thinking, "He killed Clippy." That weird little paper clip (yes, I know that's not the same as a pencil) used to get on my nerves until I stopped seeing him anymore. Regardless, it was another example of trying to humanize an object.