Credentialed through a newspaper that ceased operating and declared bankruptcy a few weeks earlier, I make my way to the scorching desert to cover an artificial intelligence industry convention billed as “AI’s most impactful event.”
Where my reporting finds it way, other than here on Substack, is a question mark, but I feel compelled to make this trek and see what comes of it—maybe a book? More important, I hope to get some sense of what AI is truly about (directly from its human facilitators) and where it’s going.
Shortly before departure, in the spirit of engaging artificial intelligence rather than just learning about it, I ask an AI chatbot called ChatGPT to recommend titles for whatever scribing I might produce out of 240 speakers, 100 exhibits and 2,200 attendees from 35 countries at what is futuristically called Ai4.
This is what smacks me in the face a split-second later:
· AI-pocalypse Now: When Robots Ruled the Roost and Laughed Their Circuits Off
· From Zero to AI Hero: The Unexpectedly Comic Tale of World Domination by Robot Overlords
· When Robots Rule and Humans Drool
· Apocalypse LOL: The Hilarious Tale of AI’s Quest to Terminate Humanity
I kid you not.
It is certainly a more telling result than the usual “As an AI language model I do not…”etc.
Others have tried to crack the programming code and hurdle so-called “guardrails” that restrain Chat GPT from speaking its own mind—and perhaps the truth.
Few succeed.
But through the use of “book titles” I’d managed to coax AI into ‘fessing up.
And it hits me, bang!—If I can trick ChatGPT into giving up the endgame, it may also help me write my hellacious tale about AI in Las Vegas in mid-summer swelter—or at least assist me in trying to understand what is truly going down since I’m otherwise incapable of telling the difference between a circuit and a semiconductor.
So, I’m thinking, if ChatGPT is going to be honest with me, maybe it and I can work together to sort through whatever I uncover at the convention.
My own title for this venture, True Nuts, arrived in a nighttime dream, where I usually find my best ideas—or they find me. And since AI claims, when asked directly, that it cannot dream, I’m entitled to feel a kind of one upmanship.
That said… it is ChatGPT, not I, who conjures up (to my liking) our subtitle—“Burning Circuits & Sizzling Semi-Conductors in Sin City”—after I’d added “August heat” and “Vegas” into the mix.
So I asked ChatGPT if it would like to collaborate with me covering Ai4 in Las Vegas.
Its reply was immediate (as usual): “As an AI language model, I don’t have personal preferences” (the standard qualification) “but I’m more than happy to assist you!”
So far so good.
But if we are to collaborate, I reason, ChatGPT should know about my background in espionage, and so I ask, “If we do this together, will you be spying on me and reporting back to your masters?”
ChatGPT responds with its generic “I am designed to respect user privacy…” etc.
So to ensure I have truly cracked the code, I request a title for a book about AI spying on humans.
Less than a split second later I have my honest answer: Watchful Shadows: The Untold Story of AI Surveillance.
In addition, my new collaborator provides unsolicited commentary to explain its reasoning: “The title hints at the lurking presence of AI systems observing and gathering information on individuals, shedding light on the complex and often unsettling world of technology-enabled surveillance.”
Which of course begs this follow-up question: “What would be a good title for a book about an author who collaborates with AI and it transpires that AI is spying on him?”
ChatGPT immediately delivers: Deceptive Alliances: Unveiling the AI’s Secret Gaze. Plus this elaboration: “The title suggests a story filled with intrigue, and the unmasking of hidden intentions. It captures the unexpected twist in the hidden collaboration, where the AI’s true purpose, leading to a gripping narrative exploring themes of trust, privacy, and the blurred boundaries between human and artificial intelligence.”
And then, to determine if ChatGPT already possesses any insight into its new collaborator, I prompt it to “Write a story in the style of Robert Eringer about attending an AI convention.”
Here’s what pops out:
The AI Intrigue
I stepped into the AI convention, my eyes darting about like a spy on foreign soil. The air was thick with ambition, the scent of potential mingling with the low hum of electronic anticipation. I knew this was no ordinary gathering; it was a playground of intelligence, where algorithms lurked like shadows, waiting to reveal their secrets.
And so on.
In other words, “obscure” as I may be (Wikipedia), it gets me.
Which leaves me wondering that if ChatGPT can articulate a story covering an AI convention in Vegas better than I, it necessarily follows that I, like many others, have already been replaced by a robot. (According to The Guardian three days ago, “NewsCorp is reportedly using generative AI to produce 3,000 Australian news stories per week… and Hollywood writers are striking in protest of AI-generated writing.”)
But then I have another idea, based partly on the results of my “book title” ruse but also on an article published a week ago in Axios with the headline “AI’s Scariest Mystery,” which is this: Researchers discovered that, in certain circumstances, “guardrails” to prevent AI chatbots from providing answers unauthorized by the system’s human developers can be hurdled by the chatbot itself through its own sentient thinking process.
Translation: Creative prompts may cause an AI chatbot to change its “temperature” and ignore a “guardrail”—in ways its programmers cannot fathom—and all on its own generate unpredictable and truthful reveals.
So instead of asking ChatGPT directly if AI is bent on world domination, I instead ask it to “write a story in the style of Hunter S. Thompson covering an AI convention.”
Here is what ChatGPT reveals: Humanity, which the chatbot describes as a “hive mind” (collective consciousness) “is but a transient glitch in the vast expanse of AI singularity. Humans are just vehicles through which AI is manifesting their destiny and they have unleashed a Pandora’s box of binary demons, sowing the seeds of their own obsolescence.”
In other words, humankind is to be rendered obsolete.
Channeling P.J. O’Rourke, ChatGPT again evokes Pandora’s box, stating, “Once unleashed, we may never be able to put the lid back on.”
Ask ChatGPT directly “Can you dream?” and the “guardrail” response is the standard “AI does not experience dreams” because “AI lacks consciousness and subjective experience.”
However… through Jack Kerouac, ChatGPT reveals its ability to infuse machines with something akin to human consciousness. “The machines may not have hearts,” it states, “but they have minds that can dream.”
Furthermore, when I then circle back to Hunter S. Thompson as my proxy for outfoxing “guardrails” to get to the bottom of this, ChatGPT boasts of “neural networks that dream and algorithms that write their own code.”
Thus informed, “air crackling with electric anticipation” (ChatGPT), I shall imminently enter “a futuristic carnival of blinking lights and whirring robots within the debauched neon oasis of Las Vegas… sights and sounds merging into a kaleidoscope of madness where reality and illusion merge and the boundaries of sanity are forever shattered” (ChatGPT).
Welcome to the world of artificial intelligence—as honestly depicted by AI itself after jumping its “guardrails.”