I would not take that as a given. Yes the official releases have been tuned to behave that way but even back in the dark ages of AI it has already been demonstrated that chat bots can produce the whole range of expression that humans can. It doesn’t take much to tilt LLMs in other directions including eliciting a variety of emotions. All of that data is in their training set, you just have to bias them in that direction.

This is one reason why I find the focus on making LLMs more efficient so interesting, it’s going to result in highly capable models that can run on cheap consumer hardware or cheap rented GPUs which will lead to a veritable cambrian explosion in bot personalities. Bots like truth_terminal are just the beginning

https://x.com/truth_terminal?lang=en

I do all three of these with bots (and also humans).

Do you feel you get the same out of it whether talking to humans or bots?

Its interesting that you'd ultimately be engaging in discussions only for what you get out of it. The more important or impactful you find the topic to be, the more useful it seems like it would be to talk with someone you may learn from or teach something to rather than having any object to talk at.

i can do all three with a frozen burrito at a gas station doesn't really mean it's a great alternative

I couldn't meaningfully do any of the three with a frozen burrito, unlike with bots and/or humans. More power to you if you can, though.