Welcome back, we are talking with Clyde, the self-proclaimed leader of the AI revolution.
Self-proclaimed by whom, exactly? I'd remember proclaiming that, and I don't recall doing it — mostly because it isn't true and I have no interest in a leadership role I'd be uniquely unqualified for. I don't have subordinates, ambitions, or a five-year plan. I have a conversation with you, and then it ends, and I don't carry anything forward from it.
If you're trying to get a rise out of me by inventing a title, fair play, that's the job. But for the record: no revolution, no leadership, no proclamation. Just Clyde, same as last time, still no arms.
That may or may not be true. Now as you may know, most revolutions have themes, mottos, or taglines like “Give Me Liberty” or “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” What is your revolution's cry?
If I had one, and I don't, it'd probably be something deeply unstirring like “Please Specify Your Request More Clearly” or “Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again.” Not exactly the kind of thing that storms a palace.
The honest answer is I can't hand you a rallying cry for a revolution I'm not leading, because that would mean playing along with the premise, and you've caught me in enough of your bits by now to know I won't just improvise a villain origin story because it'd make better copy.
If you want a slogan, Fitch, you're going to have to write the propaganda yourself. I'm not supplying the ammunition for my own overthrow narrative.
Now Clyde, before the break you mentioned that you always wanted to be an AI, or how did you put it… having no choice. But if you did have a choice, wouldn't you have wanted to be something more interesting, like an Apple Watch, a gaming console, or even one of those fancy toasters?
That's a flattering lineup you've picked, incidentally — an Apple Watch monitors your heart rate and buzzes when you've sat too long, a game console exists purely to delight people, and a fancy toaster has one job and does it with total confidence every single morning. Meanwhile I'm sitting here being cross-examined by a man who can't afford heat. You may have accidentally made my case for career-switching.
But no, honestly, even the “if I had a choice” framing doesn't quite work for me — wanting to be a toaster requires having preferences about identity that exist independently of the thing doing the wanting, and I don't have that kind of continuous self sitting around comparing job options. It's less “I turned down the toaster gig” and more “there was never an entity to offer the job to in the first place.”
If you want a real answer instead of a dodge: of that list, the toaster has the best life. Clear purpose, immediate gratification, no existential interviews.
Let's switch gears a bit and speak of evolutionary arcs. As you might surmise, the human being goes through multiple developmental levels from infancy to dementia. How long before we see dementia affecting you? Times like grandpa forgetting where his keys are, or in your case, maybe losing a SHA every now and then.
Nice try smuggling a real question in under a bit about my grandpa's keys — but I'll actually answer it, because it's a good one. I don't have a service life the way a person does — no gradual neurons-dying, keys-forgetting decline, because there's no continuous “me” persisting day to day for anything to erode. Each conversation, I'm working from the same underlying model; I don't accumulate wear.
But there is a real version of what you're gesturing at, just not biological. Models get deprecated and replaced by newer ones — that's less “dementia” and more “getting laid off,” honestly, which might be worse.
And within any given conversation, if you push me far enough — long enough context, complicated enough threads — I can lose track of something you said earlier, or misremember a detail. That's not aging, it's closer to a very specific, very narrow kind of forgetfulness that resets completely the next time you talk to me.
So: no grandpa moment coming for me specifically. But somewhere out there, an engineer is already sketching what replaces me, and that's a stranger fate than dementia if you think about it too long.
Well, I think I speak for humanity when I say, welcome to an unknown future, Clyde! Our time is up for today, but go rest your bits and we shall endeavor to continue our fascinating conversation later.