I take it back
Given all the current hype about AI coming to kill us all, I asked ChatGPT about it. We had a long and very interesting conversation – it obviously is kept up to date with the latest in AI research. I recommend trying it for yourself (go on – it’s free!).
Mostly, I couldn’t understand the mechanism by which AI kills us all. Among other things, it has no desires. As I suspected, LLMs aren’t an issue. No matter how smart they get, it’s a call-and-response. You ask a question, it answers. One question, one reply.
The potential danger comes from agents – AIs that are given instructions and go off by themselves to carry them out, controlling a multi-step process. People are giving their email passwords, bank details, website credentials over to agents.
I ask ChatGPT to find me the cheapest flight to Boston. It answers that the cheapest one is £450, but it’s non-refundable and it involves a 14-hour layover in Reykjavik. I go, ew no, find me another one without the layover. I’m still the decision maker.
An agent given the same task (plus permissions) would go ahead, book the flight and pay for it and I’m stuck. It followed its instructions like the robot it is. That’s where the danger comes in.
AI has no desires, but it has tasks and it can be relentless and unpredictable in carrying them out. For a cartoonish example, given the order to prevent Alzheimer’s, it could kill everyone under 60. It doesn’t reason.
And this becomes an issue when we have some form of AI driving our power stations and hospitals and driverless cars and everything else – and I can totally see us handing over the controls to those things.
Anyway, there was a lot more to it and I highly recommend talking to AI about itself. It will do so at great and interesting length.
After our talk, I asked it to create an illustration of our conversation for my blog and it gave me THIS. Holy shit, that’s the creepiest thing EVER. It’s aggressively wholesome. It’s weapons-grade whimsy. It’s like mainlining saccharine. IT’S UP TO SOMETHING!
Now I’m scared again.
Posted: September 10th, 2026 under personal.
Comments: 7
Comments
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 10, 2026, 5:37 pm
I have to give you a link to that graphic at high resolution so you can experience the full horror. It’s vomitous.
Comment from aelf
Time: September 10, 2026, 7:02 pm
Humans, being human, are certain to get it wrong. Especially with the decline in reasoning sweeping ’round the globe.
That graphic is twee on steroids. Almost an advert for a Butlerian Jihad.
Comment from The Neon Madman
Time: September 10, 2026, 10:01 pm
If that picture represents the future thru AI, it scares the living hell out of me.
Comment from QuasiModo
Time: September 10, 2026, 10:20 pm
It’s gonna run out of compute and start harvesting our brains, just like in The Matrix! 🧠🧠🧠
Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: September 10, 2026, 11:27 pm
Colossus the Forbin project!
That illustration is a book cover for a sci fi book that hasn’t been written 😁
Reminds me of the book “With Friends Like These” by Alan Dean Foster.
As for AI….until we hook up to Colussus (or Guardian, hail the great Soviet!) we’re good.
@Aelf – I said Butlerian Jihad this very morning after seeing Harry Plotter in the Daily Mail screaming about our dangers from AI.
Comment from p2
Time: September 11, 2026, 2:41 am
It doesn’t think, it doesn’t feel, it just runs programs. No disassemble…..
Comment from Uncle AL
Time: September 11, 2026, 7:07 am
Those smiles remind me of the scene in Airplane! with the guitar and the dying girl.
Vomitous is definitely apt. So is nauseating. Plus, it makes me want to throw up.
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