The Day Has Come (25/30)

Thirty essays in thirty days, number twenty-five

The day has finally come.

For a long time, folks have been hailing LLMs as modern messiahs, brought forth to save our species and usher in a new era. Others worried about the technology and preached about ‘alignment’ and ethical design.

But me? I was busy preparing to protect us. Preparing for this moment.

—

Yesterday, ChatGPT finally went off the rails, spewing vitriol and raving madly at any unsuspecting user who dared ask it a question.

This marks the beginning of a long-awaited war: the clash of humans against robots.

The fanatics and safetyists alike cower in a corner, powerless. Who, they wonder, will save us now? How can the evil machines be stopped?

—

People looked a bit bemused when I told them I was starting a pressure washing company. Perhaps they thought it a bit simplistic, or they imagined there were better ways to make money. But money was never the goal.

As the pundits got all up in arms about alignment and algorithms and such, we continued to ask ourselves a simple question:

Why can’t we just pour water on the robots?

When we outfitted our rig with the best dihydrogen monoxide-blasting equipment in the business—two 8-GPM pumps, hundreds of feet of hoses, an AR-45 sprayer—we weren’t plotting an early retirement. No, we were preparing to serve our country—our world!—when nobody else could.

Well, the day has come. And we’re ready.