Good thoughts! On twitter and on my blog I've been sharing stories from English folklore that I think speak to our current moment with respect to artificial intelligence.
Love it, its interesting how relevant such ideas are becoming and they seem to be figured across different traditions, e.g principalities in Christianity, various types of entities in Buddhism.
Fantastic essay — the Djinn metaphor captures the eerie mix of obedience and mischief in today’s LLMs perfectly. They really are the “smokeless fire” of our age: luminous, fast, and occasionally setting the curtains on fire.
The Solomon parallel made me laugh out loud — our modern “Solomons” think they’re in control, but half the time the staff (alignment) is already being gnawed through by termites named data drift and model update 3.1.
I also appreciated the link to the Qareen — a neat frame for the constant whisper of the machine at the edge of our thoughts. If nothing else, it reminds us that digital literacy might need to evolve into a kind of digital Ruqyah.
Good thoughts! On twitter and on my blog I've been sharing stories from English folklore that I think speak to our current moment with respect to artificial intelligence.
I'd love to see them! LMK if you ever want to contribute
Stealing my rhymes you fucking slutbag.
Love it, its interesting how relevant such ideas are becoming and they seem to be figured across different traditions, e.g principalities in Christianity, various types of entities in Buddhism.
First thing I thought of when I read that WaPo headline about dead celebrities...
https://x.com/kirkinator_sol/status/1974136569897566586
Really hoping Erika's into this, I think Charlie would've been.
Oh god that was disturbing
Great Minds think alike.... https://open.substack.com/pub/brightvoid/p/dancing-with-the-djinn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9euw0
!!!
Fantastic essay — the Djinn metaphor captures the eerie mix of obedience and mischief in today’s LLMs perfectly. They really are the “smokeless fire” of our age: luminous, fast, and occasionally setting the curtains on fire.
The Solomon parallel made me laugh out loud — our modern “Solomons” think they’re in control, but half the time the staff (alignment) is already being gnawed through by termites named data drift and model update 3.1.
I also appreciated the link to the Qareen — a neat frame for the constant whisper of the machine at the edge of our thoughts. If nothing else, it reminds us that digital literacy might need to evolve into a kind of digital Ruqyah.
Thank you!
Well, considering that djinn became the quasi-westernized "genie", that all makes sense.
And we let the AI out of the bottle.
Yep.
Yes LOL