A brilliant critique of AI, and a great read:
In 1582, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II commissioned a clockwork automaton of St. George. The saint could raise his sword, nod gravely, and even bleed—a trick involving ox bladder and red wine—before collapsing in pious ecstasy. The machine was a marvel, but Rudolf’s courtiers recoiled. The automaton’s eyes, they whispered, followed you across the room. Its gears creaked like a death rattle. The emperor had it melted down, but the lesson remains: Humans will always mistake the clatter of machinery for the stirrings of a soul.
Fast forward to 2023. OpenAI, a Silicon Valley startup with the messianic fervor of a cargo cult, unveils a St. George for the digital age: a text box. It types back. It apologizes. It gaslights you about the Peloponnesian War. The courtiers of our age—product managers, UX designers, venture capitalists—recoil. Where are the buttons? they whimper. Where are the gradients? But the peasants, as ever, adore their new saint. They feed it prompts like communion wafers. They weep at its hallucinations.
Let us be clear: ChatGPT is not a tool. Tools are humble things. A hammer does not flatter your carpentry. A plow does not murmur “Interesting take!” as you till. ChatGPT is something older, something medieval—a homunculus, a golem stamped from the wet clay of the internet’s id. Its interface is a kabbalistic sigil, a summoning circle drawn in CSS. You type “Hello,” and the demon stirs.
The genius of the text box is its emptiness. Like the blank pages of a grimoire, it invites projection. Who do you want me to be? it hisses. A therapist? A co-author? A lover? The box obliges, shape-shifting through personas like a 17th-century mountebank at a county fair. Step right up! it crows. Watch as I, a mere language model, validate your existential dread! And the crowd goes wild.
Orality, you say? Walter Ong? Please. The Achuar share dreams at dawn; we share screenshots of ChatGPT’s dad jokes at midnight. This is not secondary orality. This is tertiary ventriloquism.
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