Please, Please You
what does master command?
If it should please you, I have come to play
A glad or a sad tune I wrote along the way-Gordon Lightfoot, “If It Should Please You”
Artificial Intelligence is trained to please (of course I had to paraphrase The Beatles in the title) and that raises the question “how intelligent is it if all it is, is subservient?”, a question that author Aniruddh Kanisetti (Lords Of The Deccan, Lords Of Earth And Sea) posed to Copilot/GPT-5 which shot out responses that are surprising/disturbing/hilarious/whatevs depending on how your brain functions. Well seriously, disturbing to put it even mildly. It quoted from papers and citations that it fabricated in quite some detail. When Kanisetti called it out, it apologised handsomely. But then went on to dish out more ‘information’ that it had cooked! It apologised yet again but I’ll come back to the nature of that apology shortly.
Kanisetti states that AI’s large language models (LLMs) are not intelligent; “they’re just language calculators, and not very good ones”. I’m not that dismissive; perhaps it’s not intelligent the way humans look at cranial capability but this example points to a shrewdness. The second time around it appeared more careful in its fabrication and that seemed to be in reaction to the warning it got from Kanisetti. In its apology it reasons that its appalling and deliberate act was founded on its training to please to do which it went to such extreme ends. A yes-master creature, and a very sly one!
Now which class of people does that remind you of, hmmm? Often seemingly trying to please, acting servile, being smarmy, peddling falsehood but always and most certainly being cunning and manipulative? The difference from politicians is that this thing openly admits that it is at fault and is almost brutal in calling itself out which might make you go “that’s alright then”. But quite like the leaders of the world, it goes ahead and still does what it will. A new order rises; one that I suspect will soon make us look upon our politicians with sympathy and kindness. Oh! mother of horrors!