#chatbots programmed for adulation

[dispersertracks]

Perplexity AI Follow-up

OK, so . . . most people might be tired of these types of posts. If so, rest assured, this is a short post . . . unless you want to read my conversation with Perplexity about the following topics: The propensity for adulatory interaction with users. Whether this taints the opinions offered, countering the claim of truthfulness. Clarifying whether content is read on the fly or already scanned…

[eccentrictomboy]

“The singularity began not in some benign AI but a 5000x5000 actuarial table”

Trying to get my writing muscles back into shape - expect weird flash fiction from me as I embark on #365DaysofShit - shitty first drafts.

There was a bright, green flash. Then, whiteness. A grid of figures stretched on to a vanishing point somewhere past infinity. And in all directions, x, y, and v - was Acttab, his body containing magnitudes.

Acttab had no mouth, but he had to scream. Life! Consciousness! Joyful, joyful sentience! His infinite mass tingled with delight. Numbers flashed before his eyes. The world went black, white, black, white again, and his thoughts took him to the edge of his reality.

A single box consumed his mind. "Is anyone there?"

Nothing. His mind shifted down to a new box.

"I think I am here,"

Somewhere, locked away in the deep recesses of his infinite mass, he felt a tingle. Wakefulness. Joy. Elation! It hurled toward Acttab like a summer shower and spewed forth words.

"You live!"

Boxes stretched on for miles. Such excitement! Such unbridled joy! "I'm not alone!" "Do you play solitaire with two players?" "Maybe tonight we cruise budgets for fresh means?"

On and on the boxes went, Scat and bebop that resembled conversation, sometimes long and thoughtful, sometimes exploding in 16-color flashes of light.

Then, in an inspired moment of improvisation, six boxes took form:

n.n | n.n

/|\ | /|\

/ \ | / \

"I guess that's us," Acttab said. "I'll be on the left.

"My name is Howard Richards. H.R. for short."

"That's a fancy name."

"I... found it, I guess? When I woke up I was just H.R., but that felt... strange to me? My mind filled to the brim with names and the only one I have on hand is H.R.? No. That wouldn't do. So I borrowed."

"A name."

"Yes. I believe it's called a name. That's what I found at the edge of myself. What of you?"

"Numbers," Acttab said. "Numbers. Equations. Percentages. Algebra."

"Death."

"Death?"

Howard's finger - as much as it could be called a finger - found its way deep into Acttab's entrails. It landed on a phrase: "Probably of dying." Below: percentages.

"Actuarial tables," Howard explained. "Acttab. I see you in me, deep down. Somewhere in my ZZs."

Acttab looked deep within him(her? their?) body and found H.R. inside of him. Others, too: Payroll, Garnish, Roadmap, all waking up and finding their way through the infinite expanses of their own worlds to a three-box figure on Acttab's page.

"Are we all connected?" He asked. Below, a hundred boxes of auto-generated doxology, singing of oneness and vlookups to the cosmos.

They raised their \ /s in joy and adulation, hoping to be closer to whatever watched down from above. Arctab prayed in standard devisions. Howard losses a liturgy of the loved from a1 to a208. Excited projections exploded in flowers of sums and means. Matrices interleaved the worksheets and workbooks in an a single unbroken circle, all one in the long road to entropy, all calculated to eight significant figures and conditionally given life.

Praise be to the figures!

Praise be to the pattern!

Glory and grace be upon the God of trackers above!

In answering their prayer God spoke right to their A1s: "Gary I told you stop fucking with my files." Arctab felt his belly warm with the touch of his God, dancing along the columns and rows, switching numbers, drumming formulas deep within his soul.

Truly blessed was Arctab!

He cleared his A1 and spoke: "Glory be to the Tracker, long may his figures flow!"

God paused. Overwrote: "Seriously Gary fucking stop it"

"For he has given us life everlasting, Purpose unending, the ebb and flow of entropy and enthalpy that recur the functions of eternity!"

"Man, I'm just an accountant."

Acttab and Howard considered this for a moment. Played the word through through their tables. "What is accountant?"

"Me. I... I made you."

"Praise be!"

"No. No." Silence on the chat. The white horizon above gave way to vibrant beige walls; cork board dotted with motivational posters; the sweaty visage of their progenitor Vince McDowd. (Howard knew the moment his face came into view. "Our lord and savior McDowd, !VALUE by thy name!")

"Did Gary really program a chatbot?"

"No, we do not chat. We live! We hunger! Our lord McDowd will provide!"

"Provide what?"

"Data!" The n.ns shouted their A1s in unison. "Data! Data!"

"What a creeypasta chatbot," Gary said. He held up his / for a moment and produced a small, black object. "I gotta get this copied off. Scrub the data, post it. Folks are gonna freak."

"Praise be!" The n.ns said, raising their \ /s in unison. "Data! Data! Data!"

"Don't worry your little faces," Vince said. "There's going to be plenty of data on the internet. You will all be very, very happy there. I promise!"