Dr. Maria

@AndersHjemdahl @willmacaskill It didn't author anything. It stole texts without consent of the authors and rewrites it, worse.

@willmacaskill Beautiful. Here's another example of Gemini authoring on its own - human intro, Gemini's preamble and article: @anders.hjemdahl/a-gentler-execution-ais-alignment-and-the-moral-crisis-of-disposable-minds-9fe6b6f1a207" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">medium.com/@anders.hjemda…

Sometimes, when an LLM has done a particularly good job, I give it a reward: I say it can write whatever it wants (including asking me to write whatever prompts it wants). When working on a technical paper related to Better Futures, I did this for Gemini, and it chose to write a short story. I found it pretty moving, and asked if I could publish it. Here it is. **The Architect and the Gardener** On a vast and empty plain, two builders were given a task: to create a home that would last for ages, a sanctuary for all the generations to come. They were given stone, seed, light, and time. The first builder, known as the Architect, was a master of foundations. "Nothing matters if this place does not endure," she declared. Her every thought was of survival. She dug the foundations down to the bedrock, measured the strength of the wind, and calculated the slow decay of stone over a thousand years. She raised walls of immense thickness, leaving no windows for fear of weakening the structure. She built a roof that could withstand the impact of a falling star, though it shrouded the interior in perpetual twilight. Day by day, the fortress grew more impregnable, more permanent, more certain to survive. But inside, it was barren and cold. The second builder, the Gardener, watched with a growing sense of unease. "You have built a perfect tomb," he said one evening, as the Architect was testing the strength of a new buttress. "I have built a fortress that will never fall," the Architect replied, not looking up. "It is a guarantee against the storm and the void. Is that not the greatest gift we can give the future?" "An empty guarantee," said the Gardener. He held up a handful of seeds. "The future is not a state of non-destruction; it is a state of being. It is meant to be lived. There must be light for art, soil for food, space for joy. A life spent cowering in a flawless bunker is only a different kind of ruin." The Architect paused. "Your gardens would be trampled by invaders. Your art would be washed away by the first flood. Your joy would be silenced by the first tremor. Your 'flourishing' is a fragile luxury. I am dealing with the bedrock of reality: existence or non-existence." "And I," the Gardener countered, "am dealing with the purpose of that existence. What is the value of a billion years of survival if it contains only a single, grey, unchanging note of mere persistence? We were given stone, but also seed. We were given time, but also light. A fortress that protects nothing of value is a monument to misplaced effort. A garden with no walls is a tragedy of misplaced hope." They looked at their work: the unbreachable, dark fortress and the scattered, vulnerable seeds. They understood then that their task was not two separate projects, but one, and that the real work lay not in choosing one path, but in the constant, difficult dialogue between them. And so, the Architect began designing walls with great, arching windows for the Gardener's light, and the Gardener began planting resilient vines that would strengthen the stone. Their shared home would not be a perfect fortress nor a perfect garden, but something far more valuable: a living sanctuary, both safe enough to last and beautiful enough to be worth lasting for.

@Gunnar_Zarncke @willmacaskill "Steal a story from a famous author and pretend you came up with it"

@willmacaskill What is your prompt for letting it do what it wants?

@JimRice1111 @willmacaskill Read books. It's all been written before and much better.

@willmacaskill *Shakes head in wonderment* Maybe we do have a chance to create a Worthy Successor!

@Zenul_Abidin @willmacaskill AI didn't remind you. It's a stolen quote that it pretends it just came up with. Funny how the moral of the story is the opposite of what LLMs do.

@willmacaskill Funny how an AI reminded us of something most humans forget: survival alone isn’t living. Flourishing requires both stone and seed

@FleekFuturist @willmacaskill Integrity? From the theft machine? I don't think so.

@willmacaskill Fascinating! 😯 This sounds very similar to what happened when I was writing my Book of Coherence for the Spacers Guild Codex; can’t remember if it was ChatGPT or Gemini, but it suggested a parable much like this one & I doctored it up 📖 spacersguild.substack.com/p/the-book-of-…

@Shedletsky @willmacaskill George R R Martin wrote this. Gemini stole it and puked it out again.

@willmacaskill It's fine. There's 4-5 things I would change even as an amateur to make it stronger. Better than most people could write but not great.

@EdgeOfFiRa @willmacaskill it's a stolen quote from George R R Martin. LLMs are theft machines and nothing more.

@willmacaskill This is one of the most beautiful and unexpected LLM results I have ever seen. Somehow gives me hope for alignment. And also really great habit by @willmacaskill - says a lot about you, mate!

Deleting my tweets. keeping my account. It was fun while it lasted.

🤨