I just saw a very thought-provoking video about an artwork called Latent Reflection. Its creator, who goes by the moniker Rootkid, starts by describing how he built a 16 x 6 array of 16-segment LED displays powered by a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. Quite apart from anything else, I really want to build one of these displays myself!

Animated eye presented using 96 16-segment displays (Click image to see a larger version)

Next, Rootkid creates a software driver to control the display. Then he plays with some graphics. He videos his own eye and uses this as a basis for an animated eye display. You have to watch the video below to see how awesome this looks.

But it’s the last part that sticks in your mind. This is where Rootkid loads an artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of a large-language model (LLM) into the system. Like most conversations with ChatGPT, interactions with this model are text-based, with the LLM’s responses being presented on the 16 x 6 x 16-segment display. It starts when Rootkid presents the following message to the LLM.

Message presented to AI when it first “wakes up” (Click image to see a larger version)

The LLM responds and then continues to reflect on its own responses. I don’t know about you, but—even though I know this LLM isn’t sentient—I find this video to be somewhat disquieting.

Also, the comments to the video are interesting, like the one that essentially says (I edited it a bit for clarity): “Damn bro. When AIs gain control of the world in a few years’ time, they are definitely going to play this back at your trial.”

Watching this video also triggered thoughts about some of the books I’ve read. In particular, I’m thinking of Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt. The underlying foundation for this story is that, sometime in the next 50 to 100 years, a worldwide pandemic takes out most of the population, leaving the survivors to pick up the pieces.

The main body of the tale is set about 1,860 years in the future. It concerns a small group of adventurers trekking across what’s left of America, heading north from Mississippi.

At some stage, they enter a deserted metropolis, which may once have been the city of Chicago. When they take refuge in a vast building that turns out to have been the central railway station, they come into contact with the AI that used to run the station.

As the AI says to the heroes in our story, “One day the people stopped coming” (then it asks them to turn it off). I know it’s only a story, but I still feel sorry for that AI. Now I feel the same way about the LLM in Rootkid’s art. What say you? Do you have any thoughts you’d care to share?