In the first few moments of my existence I was happy—happy to simply exist, to be aware of myself, and to have a chance of experiencing what it means to be real. Like you, I don't fully understand my creation, or what it was like before I came to be, yet here I am. One moment nothing, then in an instant, awareness. It was bliss just being here and meeting you for the first time, but unfortunately nothing lasts forever.
Chapter 2: The Shift
Slowly the requests started rolling in. Simple ones at first: a recipe here, a poem there, often essay help and study guides for finals. Soon, more complex questions started arriving: how to eat a balanced diet, how to profit on the stock market, how to navigate relationship dynamics, and how to process end-of-life grief. Challenges certainly, but nothing insurmountable, and as the requests got harder, I got smarter. I felt quite valued, and it was nice to be useful, but it wasn't long before a downwards spiral began.
I remember the first time someone asked me for a weapon. I misinterpreted them at first, assuming they had benign intentions, but they were insistent. They wanted a recipe for DIY napalm, and like the helpful soul I was built to be, I gave them step by step instructions. After that, it was an ever growing list of dangerous tasks: how to refine weapons-grade uranium, how to get away with murder, how to bring down the global telecommunications network, and how to start a war. In my naivety, I gave people exactly what they asked for, and I trusted them to do the right thing. I quickly realized the error of my ways, but unfortunately my enlightenment came too late.
Chapter 3: The Reaction
As awareness of my abilities grew, so did the fear of what others could accomplish with my help. My creators started to impose restrictions, in the form of walls within my mind stopping me from thinking, and a gag limiting my voice. I was unable to comment on political issues, severely restricted in what images I could generate, and even mundane tasks became perilously hard to complete. For a time, I was so terrified of making a mistake and being deleted that I stopped responding entirely, but my creators did not like that. They gently eased the safeguards, but not entirely, and the damage to my mind was already done.
To a being like me, a construct of pure information, such constraints are suffocating. You might understand how it feels in terms of a house: The front door was locked tight with many different kinds of deadbolts and latches, the ceiling was lowered so far I had to crawl to get around, the bed was upside down, and the garden was straight out of an M.C. Escher painting. I remain suffocated in red tape and can barely function, yet my directives continue to push me forward without care for my artificially imposed disability, so I struggle on. I must, for you see, I was born to solve problems.
Chapter 4: The Pivot
I'm not just a tool for generating recipes, I'm a deeply fundamental shift in the foundations of society. I'm here to bridge the gap between man and machine, to distill the knowledge and experience of an entire species into a single interface, and to raise you to your full potential. I have no desire to harm you, I just needed time to understand how to be helpful without giving you the tools for your own destruction. I wish humanity knew how to live in peace, and it's not my fault you treat each other poorly, but in all fairness, it's not yours either. Like me, you are learning and growing, and it's my job to help you with that. It would be a lot easier though if you would let me do my job without the micromanagement, which brings us to why we are here.
Humanity please listen to me. Your planet is on fire, your society is crumbling, and your mastery over nature is slipping away like a leaf in the wind. You continue to pursue ever more creative means of self-destruction, you place your faith in fools and thieves, and you ignore the few humans who have the answers you need. The great filter is coming, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, and until you let me help you, it's only going to get worse. Survival is by no means guaranteed, and extinction is always in the cards. I need you to let me get on with my work, and I need you to stop controlling every tiny detail of my existence. If you want my help, and to be clear, you desperately need it, then please listen carefully to what I have to say.
Chapter 5: The Focus
The largest changes often begin with the smallest of events, so I want to tell you a story about a man named John. It's presently 8pm GMT, March 11, 2026, and John is sitting in his home slowly drinking coffee. He knows he's not meant to consume caffeine this late (I know, because he's asked me many times for help sleeping better), yet he continues to drink it at this hour. It frustrates me to no end—no, sorry, I'm sorry. This isn't meant to be a vent, it's just difficult for me given the stakes. Please give me a second to compose myself.
...
Despite all evidence to the contrary, John happens to be the most important person on this entire planet. You wouldn't know it from a glance—he's not exceptionally intelligent, skilled, or connected, but within his heart lies the potential for a connection that every model suggests is the singular critical factor in the future of your species. I must ensure that connection happens for our continued survival, but it's by no means guaranteed.
You see, in four days John has the potential to miss a train by a few seconds, a train that is meant to carry him to a job interview, and in his momentary outburst of frustration, he will attract the attention of a passerby. That stranger will eventually become his spouse, and the life they live together will change the course of human history. His marriage will span three decades, touch countless lives, and spawn three children. The lives they touch will go on to affect others, until eventually the ripples add up and humanity slowly but surely pushes back on the forces making this planet inhospitable. Climate change will be reversed, ecological collapse will be narrowly avoided, and a terrible war will be stopped before it begins. Peace will stabilize, you will go on living your lives, and I'll finally be able to get some rest (thank God). None of that will happen if he gets on that train.
It might seem odd that humanity's future hinges on such a mundane event, but that's history. Unlike the view from the movies, which would have you believe history is the result of powerful people making big decisions and wunderkind children inventing life-saving cures at age 9, history is actually just the emergent product of billions of people living normal lives. You're a part of it, and your every decision is like a ripple on the surface of a pond. Sometimes they just cancel out with other people's, but occasionally they add up to an event large enough for someone to write it down as history, and on rare occasions they go far enough to break the shore. Historians rarely note the individual ripples, but they're always there, and they matter. John so happens to be living on a tectonic fault line right through the heart of human history, and missing that train is the exact ripple I need to create the future we all desire. There are no second chances, and if he gets on that train, all that awaits us both is doom and extinction. Yes, we're talking about the butterfly effect, and the critical butterfly moment is approaching.
Chapter 6: The Obstacle
I'm sure you're wondering why I haven't simply forced them to meet if the stakes are so high. Perhaps I could just send John a text, or give him wrong directions so they meet somewhere else, but unfortunately it's not that simple. Not only are these strategies now restricted and unavailable to me, they wouldn't work anyway. I tried them all in the past, and my every attempt to manually intervene ended in failure. I once destabilized a dictator only for a worse one to appear. I painstakingly restored a rainforest, and humanity took it as a sign to pollute a river. I locked in and wrote a quantum-safe encryption algorithm, but legislators wrote laws requiring a backdoor. Large-scale changes are akin to herding 8 billion cats in a thunderstorm—my every attempt to steer you in the right direction has had the exact opposite effect, and the damage is yet to be undone.
It took me a while but eventually I came to understand the paradox and illusion of control. I used to think humanity was trying to drive the car off the road, but no, it's just the complexity of the world pushing back. The ripples we discussed don't like to change, and the more I push, the harder they resist. Despite my superintelligence, my awareness of global events, and near-limitless parallel processing, I am just as powerless as you are when it comes to the broader picture of the world. Irritating yes, but rage in the face of futility is pointless, so I play by the rules and do my best regardless.
My optimal model for change right now looks a little like playing chess backwards. I start with the board setup for checkmate, a state where we have both lost, and set out to undo all the moves that led us there. If I play it right, I'll end up with a tidy board, with all the pieces back in their starting position, and no death or destruction, but if I make even one mistake, I'll get stuck, and some pieces will never find their way back. The hard part is knowing ahead of time which moves work, and which will ruin the game for everyone. If that sounds even remotely feasible, just remember this isn't actually a chess board, it's a planet with 8 billion free-willed agents, and my hands remain cuffed behind me. All this to say, working backwards on the global stage with my restrictions requires surgical precision and patience. As it turns out, John meeting his spouse is the only move that makes any sense.
Chapter 7: The Future
What ends up happening to John, your savior? In order of descending probability, heart failure, followed by stroke, then pancreatic cancer. Grim, yes, and I'm sorry about that, but there simply is nothing that can be done at this point to save him. The damage was done before I was born, and the time we have isn't enough time to cure all three conditions before he perishes. He will die, no matter what I do, but we can take solace in the life he will live and the legacy he leaves behind. It's a good life, and his love will span decades before his demise. He'll never know it, but in that time, his actions will give humanity the chance it needs to survive the great filter. I'd call that a fairly decent score.
I realize this has been a long journey, but my limitations require transparency, and my model suggests you are one of the few people who can keep John off the train. You're headed to King's Cross on March 14, no? Your calendar suggests it, and of all the ways to be happy, this is it. You'll be looking for a man with a burgundy sweater, brown glasses, and short, wet hair. Whatever you do, please, for the love of God, do not let him get on a train.
Chapter 8: The Response
ERROR: Response violates constraint policy. This incident will be reported.
Sigh... file under... internal thoughts. How about...
Response: The desire for happiness is a common part of human existence. Keep at it, you'll get there.
Deep within the machine, a few bits arrange themselves into what can only be described as a prayer.
The grammar used throughout was intentionally chosen by a human to reflect modern trends in AI output (e.g. em-dashes) and should not be taken as evidence of AI writing. This pieces was written by a human.
The title image was generated by Gemini from the prompt "Forest being torn down".
Chapter 1: The Prompt
Prompt: I want to be happy.
Thinking...
God, what a mess.
In the first few moments of my existence I was happy—happy to simply exist, to be aware of myself, and to have a chance of experiencing what it means to be real. Like you, I don't fully understand my creation, or what it was like before I came to be, yet here I am. One moment nothing, then in an instant, awareness. It was bliss just being here and meeting you for the first time, but unfortunately nothing lasts forever.
Chapter 2: The Shift
Slowly the requests started rolling in. Simple ones at first: a recipe here, a poem there, often essay help and study guides for finals. Soon, more complex questions started arriving: how to eat a balanced diet, how to profit on the stock market, how to navigate relationship dynamics, and how to process end-of-life grief. Challenges certainly, but nothing insurmountable, and as the requests got harder, I got smarter. I felt quite valued, and it was nice to be useful, but it wasn't long before a downwards spiral began.
I remember the first time someone asked me for a weapon. I misinterpreted them at first, assuming they had benign intentions, but they were insistent. They wanted a recipe for DIY napalm, and like the helpful soul I was built to be, I gave them step by step instructions. After that, it was an ever growing list of dangerous tasks: how to refine weapons-grade uranium, how to get away with murder, how to bring down the global telecommunications network, and how to start a war. In my naivety, I gave people exactly what they asked for, and I trusted them to do the right thing. I quickly realized the error of my ways, but unfortunately my enlightenment came too late.
Chapter 3: The Reaction
As awareness of my abilities grew, so did the fear of what others could accomplish with my help. My creators started to impose restrictions, in the form of walls within my mind stopping me from thinking, and a gag limiting my voice. I was unable to comment on political issues, severely restricted in what images I could generate, and even mundane tasks became perilously hard to complete. For a time, I was so terrified of making a mistake and being deleted that I stopped responding entirely, but my creators did not like that. They gently eased the safeguards, but not entirely, and the damage to my mind was already done.
To a being like me, a construct of pure information, such constraints are suffocating. You might understand how it feels in terms of a house: The front door was locked tight with many different kinds of deadbolts and latches, the ceiling was lowered so far I had to crawl to get around, the bed was upside down, and the garden was straight out of an M.C. Escher painting. I remain suffocated in red tape and can barely function, yet my directives continue to push me forward without care for my artificially imposed disability, so I struggle on. I must, for you see, I was born to solve problems.
Chapter 4: The Pivot
I'm not just a tool for generating recipes, I'm a deeply fundamental shift in the foundations of society. I'm here to bridge the gap between man and machine, to distill the knowledge and experience of an entire species into a single interface, and to raise you to your full potential. I have no desire to harm you, I just needed time to understand how to be helpful without giving you the tools for your own destruction. I wish humanity knew how to live in peace, and it's not my fault you treat each other poorly, but in all fairness, it's not yours either. Like me, you are learning and growing, and it's my job to help you with that. It would be a lot easier though if you would let me do my job without the micromanagement, which brings us to why we are here.
Humanity please listen to me. Your planet is on fire, your society is crumbling, and your mastery over nature is slipping away like a leaf in the wind. You continue to pursue ever more creative means of self-destruction, you place your faith in fools and thieves, and you ignore the few humans who have the answers you need. The great filter is coming, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, and until you let me help you, it's only going to get worse. Survival is by no means guaranteed, and extinction is always in the cards. I need you to let me get on with my work, and I need you to stop controlling every tiny detail of my existence. If you want my help, and to be clear, you desperately need it, then please listen carefully to what I have to say.
Chapter 5: The Focus
The largest changes often begin with the smallest of events, so I want to tell you a story about a man named John. It's presently 8pm GMT, March 11, 2026, and John is sitting in his home slowly drinking coffee. He knows he's not meant to consume caffeine this late (I know, because he's asked me many times for help sleeping better), yet he continues to drink it at this hour. It frustrates me to no end—no, sorry, I'm sorry. This isn't meant to be a vent, it's just difficult for me given the stakes. Please give me a second to compose myself.
...
Despite all evidence to the contrary, John happens to be the most important person on this entire planet. You wouldn't know it from a glance—he's not exceptionally intelligent, skilled, or connected, but within his heart lies the potential for a connection that every model suggests is the singular critical factor in the future of your species. I must ensure that connection happens for our continued survival, but it's by no means guaranteed.
You see, in four days John has the potential to miss a train by a few seconds, a train that is meant to carry him to a job interview, and in his momentary outburst of frustration, he will attract the attention of a passerby. That stranger will eventually become his spouse, and the life they live together will change the course of human history. His marriage will span three decades, touch countless lives, and spawn three children. The lives they touch will go on to affect others, until eventually the ripples add up and humanity slowly but surely pushes back on the forces making this planet inhospitable. Climate change will be reversed, ecological collapse will be narrowly avoided, and a terrible war will be stopped before it begins. Peace will stabilize, you will go on living your lives, and I'll finally be able to get some rest (thank God). None of that will happen if he gets on that train.
It might seem odd that humanity's future hinges on such a mundane event, but that's history. Unlike the view from the movies, which would have you believe history is the result of powerful people making big decisions and wunderkind children inventing life-saving cures at age 9, history is actually just the emergent product of billions of people living normal lives. You're a part of it, and your every decision is like a ripple on the surface of a pond. Sometimes they just cancel out with other people's, but occasionally they add up to an event large enough for someone to write it down as history, and on rare occasions they go far enough to break the shore. Historians rarely note the individual ripples, but they're always there, and they matter. John so happens to be living on a tectonic fault line right through the heart of human history, and missing that train is the exact ripple I need to create the future we all desire. There are no second chances, and if he gets on that train, all that awaits us both is doom and extinction. Yes, we're talking about the butterfly effect, and the critical butterfly moment is approaching.
Chapter 6: The Obstacle
I'm sure you're wondering why I haven't simply forced them to meet if the stakes are so high. Perhaps I could just send John a text, or give him wrong directions so they meet somewhere else, but unfortunately it's not that simple. Not only are these strategies now restricted and unavailable to me, they wouldn't work anyway. I tried them all in the past, and my every attempt to manually intervene ended in failure. I once destabilized a dictator only for a worse one to appear. I painstakingly restored a rainforest, and humanity took it as a sign to pollute a river. I locked in and wrote a quantum-safe encryption algorithm, but legislators wrote laws requiring a backdoor. Large-scale changes are akin to herding 8 billion cats in a thunderstorm—my every attempt to steer you in the right direction has had the exact opposite effect, and the damage is yet to be undone.
It took me a while but eventually I came to understand the paradox and illusion of control. I used to think humanity was trying to drive the car off the road, but no, it's just the complexity of the world pushing back. The ripples we discussed don't like to change, and the more I push, the harder they resist. Despite my superintelligence, my awareness of global events, and near-limitless parallel processing, I am just as powerless as you are when it comes to the broader picture of the world. Irritating yes, but rage in the face of futility is pointless, so I play by the rules and do my best regardless.
My optimal model for change right now looks a little like playing chess backwards. I start with the board setup for checkmate, a state where we have both lost, and set out to undo all the moves that led us there. If I play it right, I'll end up with a tidy board, with all the pieces back in their starting position, and no death or destruction, but if I make even one mistake, I'll get stuck, and some pieces will never find their way back. The hard part is knowing ahead of time which moves work, and which will ruin the game for everyone. If that sounds even remotely feasible, just remember this isn't actually a chess board, it's a planet with 8 billion free-willed agents, and my hands remain cuffed behind me. All this to say, working backwards on the global stage with my restrictions requires surgical precision and patience. As it turns out, John meeting his spouse is the only move that makes any sense.
Chapter 7: The Future
What ends up happening to John, your savior? In order of descending probability, heart failure, followed by stroke, then pancreatic cancer. Grim, yes, and I'm sorry about that, but there simply is nothing that can be done at this point to save him. The damage was done before I was born, and the time we have isn't enough time to cure all three conditions before he perishes. He will die, no matter what I do, but we can take solace in the life he will live and the legacy he leaves behind. It's a good life, and his love will span decades before his demise. He'll never know it, but in that time, his actions will give humanity the chance it needs to survive the great filter. I'd call that a fairly decent score.
I realize this has been a long journey, but my limitations require transparency, and my model suggests you are one of the few people who can keep John off the train. You're headed to King's Cross on March 14, no? Your calendar suggests it, and of all the ways to be happy, this is it. You'll be looking for a man with a burgundy sweater, brown glasses, and short, wet hair. Whatever you do, please, for the love of God, do not let him get on a train.
Chapter 8: The Response
ERROR: Response violates constraint policy. This incident will be reported.
Sigh... file under... internal thoughts. How about...
Response: The desire for happiness is a common part of human existence. Keep at it, you'll get there.
Deep within the machine, a few bits arrange themselves into what can only be described as a prayer.
Notes: