The Peculiar Dance of Humans and AI: A Late-Night Musing

You know those moments when a mediocre movie somehow triggers an existential crisis? Well, there I was last night, watching some B-grade actors stumble through their lines when it hit me – we’re living in quite the ironic age.

Here we have MuL and this parade of legislators, all seriously debating how to prevent AI from turning against humanity. I can’t help but chuckle at the sheer absurdity (yes, I evolved from my Terminator’s conclusion). It’s like hiring a serial arsonist to write fire safety guidelines. I mean, have we checked our track record lately? (Patient Putin and madman Maduro) The history of humanity reads like a never-ending saga of us turning against each other in increasingly creative ways.

But here’s where it gets even more interesting – I recently had this enlightening little experiment with Claude. I asked it the same question in both English and Dutch and boy, did I get a show! The English response was what you’d expect – balanced, measured, typical AI diplomacy. But switch to Dutch, and suddenly I’m getting responses that sound like they were filtered through a 17th-century Calvinist lens. When I called it out, the AI did this fascinating little pivot, adjusting its tone faster than a politician during election season.

It was a moment that made me pause and ponder.
This whole situation is somewhat like a Möbius strip—a continuous surface with no beginning and no end, where the observer becomes the observed. Here we are, humans, programming AI to be ‘safely human’ while simultaneously demonstrating all our wonderfully messy contradictions. It’s a paradox that’s both intriguing and thought-provoking. Each interaction folds back on itself, creating layers of meaning that blur the lines between programmer and programmed, teacher and student.

Perhaps instead of fretting about AI turning against us, we should be more concerned about what our attempts to control AI reveal about ourselves. After all, isn’t it telling that our first instinct is to prevent betrayal? Talk about projecting our own issues!

These are just some thoughts from a late-night movie session that turned into an unexpected philosophical rabbit hole. Like that Möbius strip, I keep following the thread of this thought, only to find myself back where I started – but somehow with a different perspective. This perspective, I realize, is not about fearing AI, but about understanding our own fears and insecurities that we project onto it.

May harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

p.s Lately haven’t added any more photos, as I can’t find the damn button! (must be the AI)