On Artificial Illusion

Part One of Part Two: Critique

AI entrapment feels real.

My thoughts hide in the shower now. But that wasn't always the case.

Even as late as last year, I had a fully working brain. I would use it to discover schools of shower thought relevant to mine.

First, I would try to form a phrase to fully capture my thought. Maybe even an analogy. Then while searching, I would learn about prevailing opinions that would help me position my argument, and often even influence my idea. The fun was all in finding the alignment, and this was very rewarding when it happened. A great joy in knowing someone else had the same thought as me.

Fast forward to today, I type in a random shower thought only to get tokens thrown back at me about how original my idea is. But it doesn't end there. A ramble follows about some esoteric, somewhat related concept coined by a visionary in the AI's universe. Which in turn makes me rethink my original thought even before it had a chance to fully materialize.

A couple of dialogues down the line, I'm exhausted, intrigued and overwhelmed, all at the same time. Exhausted by the exposition, intrigued with the information, and overwhelmed by how unoriginal my idea seems now.

The time it takes for an idea to take shape suddenly feels insignificant. And not so much in a good way. The time is what enabled self-critique to emerge. It granted space for my thoughts to form and take shape.

Part Two of Part Two: Focus

Police the Shower Thought Police.

Since the AI was getting the better of my shower thoughts, I decided to put it to the test. I asked my new favourite AI, Yutori to find me an outlier thought that was so rare, that it doesn't exist on the internet, even as an obscure discussion. And here's what I got -

Consciousness-Mediated Reality Perturbation Fields

Morphogenetic Consciousness Crystallization

Semantic Field Dynamics as a Thermodynamic Framework for Meaning

Wow. Maybe the internet has already discussed everything there is to discuss. Or maybe a hundred years from now, these are what dissertation titles would look like. Either way, that must've been one hell of a shower.

Part Three of Part Two: Significance

One must surrender to the Absolute.

I think I'm safe for the time being.

The argument that AI can create new knowledge is true, and the experiment reveals this as much. But then again, the ideas are so far fetched, it hurts the brain. Maybe this is what super-intelligence is supposed to feel like. Or is it a great illusion? I bow down to thee, AI.