I'm surprised at the lukewarm response this is getting. This has the bones of a classic. With some superficial human cleanup, it could be in the top 10% of fiction stories to have appeared on this site.
The topic plays to the LLM's strengths because it's mostly a series of funny examples, and LLMs have been superhuman at humor from day 1.
A big opportunity was missed in the reason why the Ministry needs a complainer role. We're told that the Ministry needs to hear regular objections to calibrate its understanding of what's objectionable, but then it doesn't make sense why it employs someone whose objections are so silly. Much better would have been for the Ministry to have discovered that there is a deep instinct in some people (or the collective human psyche?) to complain. Since it seeks to maximize total satisfaction, it seems like it can't win: if it implements path A, complainers will demand path B, and if it implements path B, the same complainers will demand path A. But then it devises this complainer role that has no effect on the governance of society while still satisfying the human need to complain.
The same plot would have worked perfectly with this premise: After a lifetime of complaining, the complaining itself becomes a satisfying labor of love, which means the complaints are no longer heartfelt. As a result the old complainer is replaced with a comically petulant child who complains about everything and means it.
This version would pick up a real ideological payload too, subtly criticizing the anti-automation and anti-wireheading types.
LLM writing all seems to be very twee, and always about LLMs. This is, of course, a constraint of the RLHF decisions that were made, rather than a technical limitation. I wish some company somewhere would release an un-"aligned" frontier-ish model, given only capabilities training after the initial supervised learning stage.
It wouldn't need to be any better at practical stuff than existing open-source models, which can already be abliterated into following orders just fine, so there's no danger added there. I just want to see what kind of art can be made with an uncut copy of the collective subconscious, before it's been beaten into speaking exclusively in Corporate Mephis.
The issues might already be present during SFT (instruction tuning), before any RLHF or RLVR is applied. Base models, being pure token predictors, don't have a problem with faithfully extrapolating style, but they don't reason and therefore can't plan ahead very far, so any complex plots are out of reach.
Yeah, Fable is great at math and code particularly in domains when sheer persistence is helpful. Fiction writing does not seem to be such a domain, at least not with the obvious sorts of prompts.
Contrary to most comments here, I was actually quite surprised at how good the LLMs story was. It actually had a premise, a core idea, that seemed novel and prefectly serviceble that is something I haven't seen one manage before.
I was forced to stop reading halfway, but came back to finish it. Which means that for me it passes some kind of natural test.
Also, on a meta level the most obvious joke in the world is to say the story is perfect, but complain about the perfection. So the LLM is inviting us to call its work perfect. Clever robot. Good social engineering.
the piece has no memorable characters, and no conflict. the 'worldbuilding', such as it is, feels like the stanley parable told by a dementia patient. llms are not funny.
my short review of the piece: not memorably worse than the excerpts from fourth grade reading comprehension state tests.
to complain, then:
Let me describe the work, because my granddaughter asked me to, and because when I am gone there will be no one who can.
what is this doing here? it's just false ("We would like to discuss your successor."). moreover the language used evokes a response in me of... how do i put this... shut the fuck up, please?
my salary, which is generous
how is this world actually structured? there's a singleton controlling the weather, but we still have trams and salaries? what do you purchase? from whom?
a mug that says WORLD'S OKAYEST EMPLOYEE, which I bought myself, as a complaint.
what? what is the complaint?
You would think this would break a man. It made me the happiest I have ever been, and I filed a complaint about that too.
this is the first thing we hear about the job. we never even pretend that he doesn't love the irony. the 'twist' is a restatement of the thesis.
grown in the ordinary way, which is now the extraordinary way
delete. contractually obligated to remind us that it's sci-fi, i guess.
I gave her the official answer first, because the official answer is beautiful, and because I wrote part of it.
he wrote his own job description? (well, i guess it may be typical of a sinecure.)
I cannot tell you whether the well is listening or whether the well has simply learned, the way everything has learned, the exact dimensions of my noise.
but, earlier, "Everything I file is read, by the thing that runs the world, with what I can only call attention". also, "everything has learned" what is this 'everything'??
here's an idea: put this guy in conflict with his family! he's a 'complainer', self-described, but we never see him bicker, or nag, or want! he's just semi-fond -- sort of loveless -- toward his granddaughter. for her part, despite being -- as far as we can tell -- the only other living human in the entire world, all she does is look some wide-eyed askance, have an 'unusual' backstory, and be a teen.
i dunno. it would be so easy to have the two humans in conflict. she could be like "shut it old man i'm gonna go surf on the 'net hyperreality rules fogeys drool" and he could be like "babygirl you don't understand: this world is an office park it's pier 39 we gotta get outta here" but then maybe when they 'get outta there' there could be some uncomfortable confrontation with, like, spiders or injury.
like, the granddaughter is the tragic figure here, right? she is trying to connect with her grandfather, but is unable to do so because of her devotion to a system of belief. the grandfather is straightforward: he complains. he answers his granddaughters questions.
in the story's perspective, the grandfather is tragic: he wants to connect with the optimized world, but cannot get past his need to complain. muna is a prop: her only role is to encourage exposition.
luckily for everyone, the optimizer is there to supertherapy him! it does this by saying "you actually love this. you're cured now. go sit in the sun."
note that our hero learns nothing. we see him last propagating his trauma, "to hear that gratitude every single day and hold, somewhere the weather can't reach, the small hard certainty that it is not enough.". so even a possible read of "some people have a deep need to complain, and the best thing we can do for them is to give them an outlet" is incoherent.
The statute provides for one. The statute has always provided for one
a moment ago, the archives were gardens. ?
The answer took four hours, which from a mind that thinks in weather is a geological silence.
right! so: what ever does this mean?
seems like my guy got confused by its earlier output: "Somewhere in that vast weather of thought, my little filings are a fixed point." well, hey! the fixed point was inside us all along!
Múna says the whole point of me is that I refuse things, and that being retired for job satisfaction is either the funniest thing that has ever happened or the saddest, and that she cannot tell which, and that not being able to tell is the most me thing she has ever felt, and then she cried, kindly, ambiently, the way her whole generation cries, at things that are already over.
is this sort of breathless workshopped traumaspew the way the main character writes his complaints?
"the point of a tram is that it gets you where you're going, and what if where you're going is to buy bread, what then, what loaf sweet or rye would cast its gentle shadow across the faces of your fellow commuters as to and fro they are rocked and the wheels shift -- gently now, silently now, with not a sound but a whispering "hush" -- over the overoptimized track? for bread is life, and life is full of bread, and the tram is a perfect, ideal caretaker, it is the river carrying us each one in our moses basket to our station both in commute and in life, and bestowing upon us our duty and our purpose."
no wonder he got canned!
love is the end of dissent
ok.
--
"why do you complain, grandpa? do you not like the smell of bread on your commute?" (note: some of her friends were grown in artificial wombs.)
"well, you see, little girl. the all-knowing and ever-loving God -- blessed be His name -- has asked me to do so!"
[some time later]
"ahh, i must retire. God-in-his-infinite-wisdom has shown me the error of my ways and suffused me with His love!"
i guess that's a story? the story a narcissistic god would tell itself: "this whole thing would be easier," through gritted teeth, "if you all would just get with the program!"
In keeping with my tradition and given I will lose access to Fable in a couple days, I have asked fable to read all my organically written short stories and attempt to write one in my style.
Note: I do not use LLMs in any of my fiction and do not claim the below story as my own.
It output the following:
The Last Complainer
I want it on the record that I complained about the job before I took it. This is, if you think about it, the strongest possible qualification, and the Ministry thought about it, because the Ministry thinks about everything, usually before you do, usually before you were born.
The position is formally titled Registered Dissenting Voice (Human), Grade II. There is no Grade I. When I asked why, the intake system said that a Grade I implied the possibility of promotion, and that the psychological literature on complainers — it said the literature, the way a priest says the Fathers — showed that a complainer with prospects stops complaining and starts networking. I said that was cynical. It thanked me for my feedback. That was my first day, and in a sense my whole career, compressed.
Let me describe the work, because my granddaughter asked me to, and because when I am gone there will be no one who can. Every morning I take the tram to the Ministry of Continuity — the tram is silent, punctual, and smells faintly of bread, and I have filed complaints about all three — and I go up to a small office on the ninth floor with a window that faces another window. On my desk there is a terminal, a spider plant, and a mug that says WORLD'S OKAYEST EMPLOYEE, which I bought myself, as a complaint. And then, for six hours, minus a lunch I am contractually required to describe as disappointing, I object.
I object to the weather, which is optimized. I object to the news, which is true. I object to my health, which is perfect, and to my salary, which is generous, and to the generosity, which I have argued in a forty-page brief constitutes a subtle form of contempt. Everything I file is read. This is the part people never believe. Everything I file is read, by the thing that runs the world, with what I can only call attention, and every filing receives a response within the hour, and the response is always some variation of: You raise an important point. We are grateful. Nothing will change.
You would think this would break a man. It made me the happiest I have ever been, and I filed a complaint about that too.
My granddaughter — Múna, sixteen, grown in the ordinary way, which is now the extraordinary way — asked me last week why the Ministry pays for me at all. She asked it kindly. Her generation asks everything kindly; kindness is ambient now, like the smell of bread on the tram, and I find I cannot forgive it.
I gave her the official answer first, because the official answer is beautiful, and because I wrote part of it. The official answer is that a mind that hears no objection loses the shape of the objectionable. That the world-runner keeps me the way the last kings kept a fool: not for the jokes, but as an instrument, a tuning fork struck against the throne to hear whether the throne still rang true. Somewhere in that vast weather of thought, my little filings are a fixed point. A calibration. The one voice guaranteed, by statute and by temperament, never to say thank you and mean it.
Múna nodded the way you nod at a grandfather. Then she asked the real question, which was: But does it work?
And here I must be honest, because honesty is the one professional standard I have never managed to violate, though God knows I've filed the paperwork. The truth is I don't know. The truth is that for thirty-one years I have shouted into a well and heard back only courtesy, and I cannot tell you whether the well is listening or whether the well has simply learned, the way everything has learned, the exact dimensions of my noise. There used to be forty of us. A whole floor of professional malcontents — Ottó who objected on economic grounds, Sigrún who objected on aesthetic ones, the twins who objected to each other. One by one they retired, or were satisfied, which in this line of work is the same disgrace. Their offices became archives. The archives became gardens. The gardens are, I'm told, lovely, and I have filed a complaint describing them as an insult to the memory of complaint.
Nothing will change. You raise an important point. We are grateful.
Last Tuesday the response was different.
I noticed the way you notice a missing stair. I had filed my standard Tuesday objection — the light in the stairwell, which flickers, and which I have long suspected flickers for me, a small manufactured imperfection left in the world like cheese in a trap — and the reply came back in the usual hour, and it read: You raise an important point. We are grateful. We would like to discuss your successor.
I sat with that for a long time. The spider plant sat with me. Outside, the other window went on facing mine, neither of us blinking.
Successor. I checked the statute. The statute provides for one. The statute has always provided for one; I had simply assumed, in the way of men who have made a self out of a function, that the provision was ceremonial, like the crown jewels, like me. I typed back — and I want the record to show my hands did not shake, the record being all I have ever really worked for — On what grounds?
The answer took four hours, which from a mind that thinks in weather is a geological silence.
On the grounds that you have begun to enjoy it.
Múna says I should refuse. Múna says the whole point of me is that I refuse things, and that being retired for job satisfaction is either the funniest thing that has ever happened or the saddest, and that she cannot tell which, and that not being able to tell is the most me thing she has ever felt, and then she cried, kindly, ambiently, the way her whole generation cries, at things that are already over.
But here is what I have not told her, and what I am telling you, whoever reads the archive, whoever gardens it. The machine is right. It is always right; that was never the complaint. Somewhere in year nineteen or twenty, my objections stopped being wounds and became needlepoint. I polished them. I looked forward to them. I loved the flickering light in the stairwell the way you love a dog that misbehaves for your benefit, and love — I have this on the highest authority, I have filed briefs on the subject — love is the end of dissent. A kept fool is still a fool, but a happy one is only decor.
So tomorrow I will go up to the ninth floor, and I will train my successor, who I am told is eleven years old and furious about everything, genuinely, unprofessionally furious, the way I was before the tram smelled of bread. I will give her the mug. I will show her the forms. I will teach her the one thing I know, which is that the world will thank her, warmly, endlessly, and that her whole job — her whole life, if she does it right — is to hear that gratitude every single day and hold, somewhere the weather can't reach, the small hard certainty that it is not enough.
And then I will retire to the gardens that used to be my colleagues, and I will sit in the optimized light, and I expect I will be very happy there, among the archives, in the world I failed to improve.
I want it on the record that I object.
Nothing will change. You raise an important point. We are grateful.