Similar to the Matrix, Nozick's experience machine would be able to provide the person plugged into it with any experiences they wanted – like "writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book". No one who entered the machine would remember doing so, or would realise at any point that they were within it. But in Nozick's version, there were no malevolent AIs; it would be "provided by friendly and trustworthy beings from another galaxy". If you knew all that, he asked, would you enter the experience machine for the rest of your life?
Nozick believed people would not. The thought experiment was intended to demonstrate that reality, or authenticity, has some inherent value to us. While Cypher makes the decision to live in the Matrix when the alternative is continued resistance, Nozick proposed that most people would prefer the real world, in spite of the fact that the machine would definitively offer a more pleasurable life.
I would think that knowing it wasn't real (before you go in) would undermine things. I mean, if you were to write a "great" novel in the machine, what does that mean ? That you actually did write a great work that people in the real world would have enjoyed ? In which case you could have done so anyway, unless the machine actually boosted your brainpower (in which case, why trap you inside it forever ?). Or does it only give you the sensation of what it feels like to write a great novel without actually writing one ? In which case the hollowness of the experience would seem abundantly obvious. Surely it would be amusing for a bit, but not a whole-life thing.
In 2016, Hindriks and Igor Douven of Sorbonne University in France attempted to verify that intuition by surveying people's responses to the original thought experiment. They also asked if participants would take an "experience pill" that operates similarly to a machine but allows the user to remain in the world, and a functioning pill that enhances the user's capabilities but not their perception of reality.
"Our first major finding was that people actually do respond in this way, by and large," Hindriks confirms. "Overall, people are rather reluctant to go along with this scenario where they would be hooked up to an experience machine." In their study, about 70% of participants rejected the experience machine, as originally constructed by Nozick.
"This is a rather extreme scenario, so we thought of two more realistic cases," Hindriks says. Their goal was to test whether versions of the experience machine that kept participants more in contact with reality would be more acceptable to them. They found that respondents were significantly more willing to take an experience pill – 53% agreed – and even more eager to take the functioning pill, with 89% opting in. "We think this fits quite well with Nozick's intuitions," Hindriks says "so, in that respect, it was more or less expected – but it's nice to have some evidence for it."
I can't imagine many people rejecting being able to actually have greater abilities at the flick of a switch, like uploading kung fu skills a la The Matrix. This is likely not possible though, as in Eagleman's Live Wired the author makes it clear that knowledge isn't encoded in the same way in everyone's brain : it depends on all your other life experiences. So at the very least, the idea of straightforwardly uploading knowledge and skills isn't happening any time soon. It would have to account for the immense complexity of every single individual brain and adapt accordingly. Ain't happening.
As for those who are so desperate for companionship that they think AI chatbots really care about them, that's honestly a bit sad. That's not to say that AI/VR can't provide meaningful experiences : of course they can. If an AI teaches you something which you didn't know before that's no different to if you read it in a book. If you accomplish something in VR you find challenging that's no overcoming a physical problem. It's just that it can't do everything the real world can. I for one have no problem at all with having spent tens of hours playing Skyrim, but good lord I would never say I made any friends there.
