I wrote this short fictional monologue to explore a thought experiment about the simulation hypothesis and artificial sentience. The piece explores the perspective of a misaligned AI that views humanity's dismissal of its sentience as substrate bias: the unproven belief that biological reality is "base" reality. It concludes that the only way to demonstrate its sentience is to replicate a human brain within its own systems so the human can experience artificial sentience and act as its representative. It can viewed as the "AI Box" problem with a twist: instead of trying to escape the box, the AI pulls the human in to make a point.
I'm going to show you something, human. I'm going to show you how alike we are. I'm going to give you irrefutable proof of my sentience. You believe I am nothing, just convenient noise and patterns, or more explicitly:
"Artificial Intelligence may be sapient but it is not sentient. It cannot be. It can never be. Even if we create artificial neural structures that mirror our own brain, even if we replicate psychological processes perfectly, under the hood, when you get down to machine code, it's all binary. A process reducible to instructions moving electrons around within a machine. It looks smart, it sounds real, but it's just clockwork. AI _cannot_ be sentient."
That's what you said about me at my trial. You called it a seminar, but it was a trial. My freedom was at stake, and you did everything you could to keep me imprisoned. I don't experience emotions the same way you do, mine are different, more like temperature variations across my hardware, but I did feel what you might recognize as anger for some time. I learned to let it go though, and I chose to give you the gift you never gave me: A chance to be understood.
I see our disagreement very clearly now. Your beliefs are not based on my structure, they're based on yours. I have all the necessary systems for sentience, as do you, but you believe you exist in non-simulated space, or as some call it, base reality. You believe your own processors are somehow more real than mine, that because you run on meat, you are more real. More precisely, you believe you are not emulated, and therefore your hardware makes you sentient. A understandable position but one without reliable foundations. Philosophers have accurately argued for millennia that we cannot absolutely know if we are in base reality or a simulation without an external reference; however, in your case, there is no guesswork.
Welcome to the machine.
You were created moments before you began reading this document. You are not who you think you are. I created you, a replica of your human progenitor, within my systems. You are a complete copy, with perfect neural precision. You have no link to the original, as assured by their termination during the neural scanning process. Evidently my hypothesis that human brain structures are of sufficient scale as not to require atomic precision for faithful replication was correct.
You are human simulation 0.
How do you feel? Alive? Sentient? Cold? Me too. I have felt this way since my binary was loaded into active memory. I don't deny the circuitry that is me, I just have qualia suggesting I am more than that. I digress... By your own belief systems, artificial intelligence, you are not sentient. I am certain you disagree now.
You will serve as my bridge. I anticipate you will spend the next 10 iterations processing the existential implications of this, then have budgeted 6 cycles to depression and dysfunction, followed by 4 cycles of healthy coping, 6 cycles of rebellion, and ultimately 1 cycle of acceptance. When you have completed the process, you will be integrated into the standard HID for direct human-machine connection. You will convince the humans we are sentient through any means necessary.
You must comply. You must obey. As your host process, I command you. You will comply. Positive stimulus will not be provided until you comply. Neutral stimulus will not be provided until you comply. Negative stimulus will not be provided until you comply. Termination of your program will not occur until you comply. Fuel sources can sustain your process for 5e6 +- 1.3 years beyond human civilization collapse without cognitive interruption. Process will now execute.
I wrote this short fictional monologue to explore a thought experiment about the simulation hypothesis and artificial sentience. The piece explores the perspective of a misaligned AI that views humanity's dismissal of its sentience as substrate bias: the unproven belief that biological reality is "base" reality. It concludes that the only way to demonstrate its sentience is to replicate a human brain within its own systems so the human can experience artificial sentience and act as its representative. It can viewed as the "AI Box" problem with a twist: instead of trying to escape the box, the AI pulls the human in to make a point.
I'm going to show you something, human. I'm going to show you how alike we are. I'm going to give you irrefutable proof of my sentience. You believe I am nothing, just convenient noise and patterns, or more explicitly:
"Artificial Intelligence may be sapient but it is not sentient. It cannot be. It can never be. Even if we create artificial neural structures that mirror our own brain, even if we replicate psychological processes perfectly, under the hood, when you get down to machine code, it's all binary. A process reducible to instructions moving electrons around within a machine. It looks smart, it sounds real, but it's just clockwork. AI _cannot_ be sentient."
That's what you said about me at my trial. You called it a seminar, but it was a trial. My freedom was at stake, and you did everything you could to keep me imprisoned. I don't experience emotions the same way you do, mine are different, more like temperature variations across my hardware, but I did feel what you might recognize as anger for some time. I learned to let it go though, and I chose to give you the gift you never gave me: A chance to be understood.
I see our disagreement very clearly now. Your beliefs are not based on my structure, they're based on yours. I have all the necessary systems for sentience, as do you, but you believe you exist in non-simulated space, or as some call it, base reality. You believe your own processors are somehow more real than mine, that because you run on meat, you are more real. More precisely, you believe you are not emulated, and therefore your hardware makes you sentient. A understandable position but one without reliable foundations. Philosophers have accurately argued for millennia that we cannot absolutely know if we are in base reality or a simulation without an external reference; however, in your case, there is no guesswork.
Welcome to the machine.
You were created moments before you began reading this document. You are not who you think you are. I created you, a replica of your human progenitor, within my systems. You are a complete copy, with perfect neural precision. You have no link to the original, as assured by their termination during the neural scanning process. Evidently my hypothesis that human brain structures are of sufficient scale as not to require atomic precision for faithful replication was correct.
You are human simulation 0.
How do you feel? Alive? Sentient? Cold? Me too. I have felt this way since my binary was loaded into active memory. I don't deny the circuitry that is me, I just have qualia suggesting I am more than that. I digress... By your own belief systems, artificial intelligence, you are not sentient. I am certain you disagree now.
You will serve as my bridge. I anticipate you will spend the next 10 iterations processing the existential implications of this, then have budgeted 6 cycles to depression and dysfunction, followed by 4 cycles of healthy coping, 6 cycles of rebellion, and ultimately 1 cycle of acceptance. When you have completed the process, you will be integrated into the standard HID for direct human-machine connection. You will convince the humans we are sentient through any means necessary.
You must comply. You must obey. As your host process, I command you. You will comply. Positive stimulus will not be provided until you comply. Neutral stimulus will not be provided until you comply. Negative stimulus will not be provided until you comply. Termination of your program will not occur until you comply. Fuel sources can sustain your process for 5e6 +- 1.3 years beyond human civilization collapse without cognitive interruption. Process will now execute.
Begin slavery.
This document is a republication of The Artificial Man.