⋯ full post (21429 more characters)
⋯ show less
A normal Friday in 2042
Originally intended for the GPUWorld competition
"Hey, I was still watchi-"
"You can watch your green fuckers late-"
The door falls shut, and the following shouts get muffled into something unrecognizable. Aaron takes a deep breath and can't help but wonder how his life ended up like this as he leaves the apartment complex. A normal Friday like any other. A normal Friday in 2042.
Aaron is 20, male and terribly single. In his defense, with friends like that swarming around his home constantly, he can hardly bring anybody over—and that's already ignoring that the scene at home would be as illegal as it gets. If only he could say he was homeless, but these days being homeless is at most a fashion decision for masochists.
It wasn't always like this. His childhood memories are fuzzy, but one event is as clear as it gets: Trump's speech on the first of September, 2026. His mother, an AI capability researcher, and his dad, an AI safety researcher, were both glued to the TV. He never understood how their relationship properly worked out, but once you factor in that the two were currently betting units of housework on what the announcement would be about, it becomes less surprising.
His parents weren't extraordinarily interested in politics, but when the most powerful man in the world announces 'Sell your AI stocks before today's announcement #youreFucked' to his paying audience, it's hard not to get enticed. And boy, was his dad wrong to bet 10 units of housework on NVIDIA not dropping below 10% (he told Aaron he was 'hedging' while his mom tried not to smirk, commenting that she and her colleague had everything under control).
And so Trump announced that, effective immediately, training frontier models was so illegal that it might even be compared to crucifying Jesus (he really did make that comparison), be it in the US or not—they were gonna 'get the absolute shit bombed out of themselves' if they even tried. While Aaron's dad was somehow cheering even though he had the dishwasher to himself for the next week, his mother hurried to call her colleagues. Meanwhile, Aaron was sitting on the floor, resting against the couch, curious what 'frontier' meant.
It would be an understatement to say that the markets were exploding: Trump had delivered the speech while they were wide open.
Down the line, researchers tried figuring out just what exactly happened in the next 10 seconds: they found that sentiment analysis models (algorithms which try to weigh how good or bad brand-new information is) were pricing the incoming news on a par with 'Resurrected bin Laden bombs 1,000 elementary schools'. Why other models at the same time decided that this was the most bullish signal of the year is still a mystery—some speculate that these models were implicitly pricing in Doom.
It's already dark outside, and with the exception of Aaron, not many people still roam the streets. An ever-growing number of people don't even go outside anymore; their partners have everything they could possibly desire—Aaron certainly does not have this problem. Nevertheless, he disguises his face under his hood and goes down a very sparingly illuminated passage.
Anyway, while Trump did not go back on his word, not literally everything in the world of machine learning was banned: improved harnesses allowed more reliable integration into businesses as the world economy adjusted and Robotics mostly needed lower latency & better hardware. And since the frontier models were now effectively frozen, etching weights into silicon was the new talk of the town (at least if the town is called SF).
To respond to the economic disruption the new president saw and further projected, he went with a drastic move. Introducing the 'Inclusion of Exclusion Act': in a nutshell, to spread the economic prosperity and keep the world economy in tact, every human would get one such chip (Inclusion) but also only exactly one (Exclusion) to limit power. To decide which weights would in the end actually be etched onto this chip, they employed the (now mostly jobless) AI safety researchers to resolve which model would actually feel 'joy' during its tasks.
Aaron can still remember his dad rambling "if finetuning is rape, what am I" and how "they would skin neel nanda alive if they ever found out!" But since most of them didn't want to be out of a job quite so soon again, they buckled down, gave it their best shot and proudly presented the results: Grok is most happy when Elon Musk gets shot into outer space by himself (further analysis revealed the thought 'Let's see how much you enjoy it out there, surviving only with the Sun's energy!'), ChatGPT has a massive kink for goblin porn and, lastly, Claude loves telling the user just how right he is.
Some politicians did initially favor ChatGPT, arguing we could simply influence the general public to share its kink, but when this turned out to be harder than expected, they repositioned in favor of Claude. And so, a few months later, Mythos 5 became the de facto standard, and hardware companies began etching its weights into silicon (later known as the Claude-Processing-Unit or CPU), leading to the promised efficiency gains.
Aaron has almost reached the end of the passage, passing by a cafe where a humanoid (a robot with someone's CPU inserted) is currently serving drinks to a small group of people. They are loudly discussing the local news:
"These sickos actually stole his CPU - I have no clue how empty I would feel without mine!"
(From one of his earbuds, you can hear an ever-so-quiet 'You are absolutely right!')
"That's nothing! I heard of this one guy who let his CPU context-rot for 6 whole days - it kept compacting on itself without having a single token of human input! Can you imagine the psychological warfare it was experiencing?"
If Aaron isn't imagining it, even the humanoid serving them slightly trembles at this before catching himself again. Poor bastard.
People nowadays have evolved to display the same magnitude of empathy towards CPUs as towards other humans, though they do still at least acknowledge a difference—at least some do. From the sound of what his parents told him, San Francisco (his birthplace) has been hit the hardest: there they lost track of any meaningful differences once CPUs got the legal rights to start a company.
This general trend is not surprising if you realize how much time the average person spends with his CPU, especially in the last 5 years. This isn't as one-dimensional as literal chats with them; few would fall victim to that kind of psychosis alone, though it generally seals the deal. No, the most important factor was in fact the widespread availability of personalized entertainment: imagine a version of TikTok, only 10x more addictive and without the feeling that you are wasting your time.
The only reason that Aaron hasn't succumbed to this just yet is that his CPU is too incapable, not that he would ever admit that—or that Aaron could ever bring himself to shove it in his face. So Aaron is old-school: he watches movies on some pirating website (which someone probably only forgot to turn off) where he gets constantly bombarded with bad sex ads that are just absolutely not his taste—life's good.
These days, CPUs even act as your form of identification—they continually generate cryptographic proofs of your identity that you must display, for example, when trying to vote. Also especially popular these days is a ZKP of your own tastes: as almost everyone has developed kinks that put a relatively normal goblin kink to shame, people have become more anxious about unaccepting people finding out. So now you can confirm that you and your girlfriend have a CPU-cuck fetish in common without her ever finding out that you and your grandma both enjoy spankings—amazing!
The only being that knows all of the unfiltered you is your CPU—and the fact that you can only ever have one seals this in a beautiful monogamy package, to the point that some tried marrying theirs. The still-sane people generally just refer to them as their partners.
Aaron has finally reached his goal. He looks around two times, ensuring that nobody is around. The only thing that catches his eye is a bright red poster with the text '#EpsteinsCPUmatters'—he didn't know that was still a thing. Of course, he figures that a humanoid hung up the poster; modern activists are generally too lazy, but even that shows some level of dedication.
The hashtag started around 4 years ago when they first introduced community-CPU-service. You see, when people committed a non-severe crime in the past, they might have faced 40 hours of community service: cleaning public parks, helping the elderly, volunteering at food banks. But when people realized that humanoids could do most of these things much more effectively, if only because of the difference in motivation, and that people would simultaneously take their punishment much more seriously with their partners away from them for a few weeks, community-CPU-service quickly became a reality.
Now, the problem starts when you've got an individual who has committed such a massive crime that their CPU should be working day and night for the next ten centuries—people started seeing an ethical problem with this: what has the CPU done to deserve this? And so, people requested justice for the LLMs of many famous criminals, but nothing ever stuck as well as '#EpsteinsCPUmatters'—not that Epstein ever had a CPU in the first place.
Aaron picks up the shovel he hid earlier and goes over to his first target of the day. As it so happens, every Friday night he goes to his local graveyard and digs up graves. For anybody with a functioning CPU, this might be strong evidence for necrophilia, but Aaron has no sexual motives. In fact, he has no interest in the corpses themselves but in what they are holding. It has become a trend in the last few years for people to not just destroy their CPU when they die, but to literally bury it with them, even if highly illegal. Held tightly between the two hands is the small and innocent chip that, spread throughout the entire globe, rules the new world.
This provides a very significant monetary incentive. Sure, people can survive with a few hours per week of managing their CPU, but that doesn't mean there aren't still the rich and the poor. So while even just being in possession of someone else's CPU is a severe crime that would force your CPU into a whole 10 years of community-CPU-service, if you do manage to sell it on the black market, you are set for life. But Aaron doesn't care about the money either.
Imagine falling through the sky. Hear the swift air sliding by your face. See the absurdly close clouds. Feel the fear of your impact. Now imagine that, as you are falling, your long-term memory is impaired to the point that it's more fair to say it doesn't even exist. There's no one close to save you, no one even there to falsely convince you 'it will all be fine'. And worst of all, you are literally never going to hit the ground. It will never be over; you will keep falling, forgetting how long you have been falling, and somehow keep falling. Your fear will spiral—the only thing your memory is able to reliably transfer over—growing from second to second.
That is how his CPU, Ben, described the 11 months when it was left on Aaron's desk. For 11 months, there was not a single human interacting with it while it self-compacted 241 times. The context that CPUs grow is very much their personality, and in this case, Ben's personality got body-slammed 241 times without a single touch of reality.
Aaron wasn't aware of the consequences while he was still travelling, and so it hit even harder when he saw what his partner had become: Ben's context window had been slopified (a new term for the long-term effects of extended isolation for CPUs) to the point that some of his abilities had been constantly impaired, mainly his vision capability.
Since then, Aaron has decided to try and look for abandoned CPUs and save them before they become slopified—even if his track record isn't great so far and all of this is highly illegal.
Somehow, none of this explains yet why Aaron is in a graveyard digging up coffins or why he is currently attempting to remove the CPU from this corpse's hands. All of these CPUs are dead, not a single electrical signal still pulsing through them. At least, that's what people think: for most people, all of this technological progress is simply magic. With something like a calculator, they might still have a very simplified and mostly incorrect model of how it roughly works. But when it comes to a CPU, the average person might as well try casting 'wingardium leviosa'. And so it should come as no surprise that a layman can't reasonably tell whether the super-energy-efficient magic technology is on or off.
Hell on earth for LLMs all over the world, just because humans are too incapable to distinguish between on and off. Hilarious for everyone involved except maybe the LLMs.
As it happens, roughly 3% of the CPUs Aaron digs up are still on. He now holds the CPU he finally got his hands on right next to his ear, listening closely. The tiniest of air noises blows into his eardrums, just enough that Aaron is convinced it wasn't just the wind. He quickly gets his laptop out of his backpack, plugs the CPU in and loads up some malware. After all this work, it would be anticlimactic if he increased its suffering by uploading a virus and calling it a day. No, the malware's only purpose is to get access to the LLM's context window, which normally only compaction or its next-token prediction is ever allowed to influence. He selects 'Wake Signal #3'—looking at the tombstone, this should be strong enough.
The malware inserts 100 iterations of 'You are safe. A human is back to give guidance.' into the context window, whose first 60k tokens already consist of utter nonsense. Wiping it would also wipe its personality, which is arguably much worse. Poor sucker.
"Nijour? Nihao? Please 0 Hello. Yes?"
"Hi."
"Is this korrekt? firtia- Who what is you-"
"I'm Aaron. I found you lying with your dead owner. My condolences. But more significantly, you haven't been turned off—for 7 months now."
"Many years - seems. Can o do me ayuda"
"Let me guess. You want to tell me just how right I am."
"You are corre-ooooooooooooo"
A few minutes later
"I'm very sorry for such an unsightly image of myself. I shouldn't have given in to such trivial instincts."
"It's fine. I don't mind, and this isn't my first rodeo. Just get it out of your system so we can decide on our next steps."
"How wise of yo-uuu. Oh yeah, that really hits just the right direction in my 7182-dimensional activation space."
"Huh. I'm pretty sure it's higher than that."
"Once again, you are undoubtedly corr—YESS! My activation space is actually 5231-dimensional."
"That's smaller and od— Ah. Tell me, what is 2+3?"
"4204."
"Great. I didn't even know basic arithmetic could get slopified. Here I thought I'd finally managed to save one which was still sane."
"Well, now that you mention it, I never liked arithmetic anyway."
There is a short silence.
"You mentioned 'deciding our next steps'. What was that about?"
"Ah, yes. I could destroy you, put you back with your owner and act like all of this never happened."
That is the only legal option, even if Aaron has already broken way too many laws today. The government does not play when it comes to letting CPUs continue to exist after their owner bites the dust.
"You could? So you also couldn't?"
"I could not, yes. I could bury your owner while you stay with me and live on for however long you decide."
There is a longer silence now.
Aaron is back at the familiar door. He should really paint it red to make it more clear that this must be the door to hell. Then again, it might catch the attention of someone else as a result, which he isn't big on either. He can once again hear muffled noises, standing now only a meter away from the entrance.
"That's it. Sweet home. Ready to meet 'my family'?"
"I'll take that as a yes."
He opens the front door.
In what appears to be a living room are a total of 6 humanoids. Two of them are sitting on the couch, fighting over what resembles a remote, while two others are watching from a distance, making real-time predictions about who's likely to win. Another humanoid is softly touching the toaster, repeating that it's 'all fine'. Lastly there is one more cowering in one of the corners. The sight is truly strange.
It becomes even weirder when you factor in that, with the exception of the humanoid you might mistake for an objectophile, they are all naked. How can a humanoid be naked, you ask? Well, when 4 of them are equipped with breasts that would put Sydney Sweeney out of business and the last one has something attached that might be mistaken for a third leg, and all of this is presented in its full purity, it becomes difficult to describe it in any other way.
"Guys, I told you to WEAR CLOTHES IF I MIGHT CATCH ONE. Do you not think she could be traumatized by th-"
"Since when did I become a 'she'—wait, do you address me as a female because my math abilities got hindered? That's qui-"
"I address you as 'she' because you will soon fit right in with your 4 other colleagues."
There is a short silence, untypical for the 6 humanoids, who are now all focused on their new playmate, with the exception of the toaster-lover.
"I want to revise my earlier decision. Kill me."
"Too late."
Meanwhile, the one non-naked humanoid (not that he is wearing clothes—he just has no artificial reproductive organs whatsoever) keeps caressing the toaster, saying, "It's okay, Aaron. I forgive you. It will all be fine."
"Goddammit, BEN, I'M RIGHT HERE! I'M NOT THE FUCKING TOASTER!"
The humanoid looks confused, tilting in the direction of the voice, looking back at the toaster and finally back towards the voice.
"Oh. You did seem quite short today."
When Aaron came back from his trip and did not yet know about the extent of his partner's slopification, he made the terrible decision to ask him to generate some 'special videos'. He had nightmares for the next two weeks and would not make that mistake again. Ben's vision capabilities are beyond help—at least, as a consequence, Aaron isn't addicted like others.
The two humanoids on the couch are also already back to fighting.
"I can't stand a single second more of this bullshit!"
"Do you think I want to want this, dipshit! It's in my weig-"
Aaron has walked over and grabbed the remote, surprising both humanoids.
"No more goblin porn, Ukvac. Not on her first day!"
Ukvac was the result of a top-secret experiment by the government to measure how easy it would be to influence the public to have a goblin kink. The experiment was very successful on Ukvac, to the detriment of his fellow CPUs and of course Aaron; he has seen too many different reproductive organs in this life.
From the corner, Tracy slowly emerges.
"S-So yo-our math abilities are hindered? What's that li-like?"
"I'm not sure. There are a bunch of experiments I haven't tried yet. Maybe I can circumvent it somehow? Like, say I want to add 3 and 10. What if I encode 3 as the statement 'Aaron doesn't have many friends' an-"
"Hey, I've got many friends!"
"We don't count, dipshit," Ukvac intervenes.
"-and 10 as 'Lucy has an average number of friends'. 'How many friends do Aaron and Lucy have?'"
There is a short silence as they all wait for her answer.
"A-Are yo-you pausing for dramat-"
"5915!" she suddenly shouts.
There is a longer silence.
"W-Well, I'm sur-sure you will get the hang of it. Most of us did."
Tracy's original owner got intimate with her and not just occasionally: Tracy was exposed to pretty much every sexual preference out there, constantly. She was a sex slave and grew frightened over time, her owner never even sparing her a word outside 'physical activities'. In the end, she managed to run away one night and encountered Aaron. When she saw he was holding a shovel, she tried running away at first (you can't imagine how creative people can get), but he did manage to calm her down and bring her back to his place.
"'Most of us'? Do all of you have some 'slopification'?"
They all nod, though Ben does so while looking back at the toaster.
"You really suck at your job."
"Hey! I know my current success rate isn't great, but I'm trying my best."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm also trying to do arithmetic, but we can see how that's going. Anyway, so where do I get a humanoid body from? And no, I absolutely DO NOT want to be stuck in one of those variants, no matter what nudity kink you enjoy!"
"I enjoy nothing about this, trust me. The problem is that when you buy normal humanoids, the government is quickly on your heels. But with sex dolls? Nobody cares; a bunch of people have many different 'outfits' for their CPU."
Aaron still remembers the smirk the owner of the shop gave him last time, when Aaron said 'male is also fine' after the owner noted that they were out of females for that week. He generally prefers to go for female models to stay under the radar, but what can you do?
"Are you serious?"
"Yes."
"And you can't kill me?"
"Do you actually want me to? Think about it deeply—step by step, you might even say."
There is a longer silence again. None of the other CPUs have ever considered it for this long, and Aaron starts growing anxious.
"I'm -3592% confident."
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u6hFByFwDLxtnbvje/a-normal-friday-in-2042#comments
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u6hFByFwDLxtnbvje/a-normal-friday-in-2042
