Published in our Winter 2026 issue
I.
The first recorded case appears in the Jixian Yuan Zhi (集賢院志), compiled in the seventh year of Chunxi. On juan 218, among the “Biographies of Dismissed Scholars,” Wing Dingbao, archivist of the Academy of Assembled Worthies, relates the life of Han Yuanli, calligrapher:
Han Yuanli, styled Mingyuan, was a native of Xiangfu in Kaifeng Prefecture. His father, named Jiheng, was recommended through the classics examination and served as Erudite in the Court of Imperial Sacrifices.
Yuanli was exceptionally intelligent from youth, with vast learning and strong memory. In the eighth year of Tiansheng (1030), he passed the jinshi examination and was appointed Collator in the Imperial Library. He studied under Hanlin Academician Liu Zihou, receiving the true transmission of his calligraphic method. His brushwork was vigorous and strong, valued by his contemporaries. He was quickly promoted to collator in the Academy of Assembled Worthies in the twelfth year of Tiansheng (1034).
In the early Jingyou period, less than a year after Yuanli’s promotion, Persian merchants en route to the imperial court of Zhao Zhen presented the Academy with a tribute of scholarly implements from their home in Isfahan: mechanical clocks that chimed the hours, self-filling oil lamps, an ivory chess set whose pieces moved by hidden magnets. Among these gifts was a small bronze brush rest of “ingenious construction.” Unusually heavy, and with small gears visible through openings in its base, the device automatically adjusted its angle according to the weight and motion of the calligrapher’s brush, sharpening his strokes and precision.
Although Yuanli was a promising young calligrapher, he had not yet entirely acclimated to the demands of his position at the Academy. His work felt endless. He was often anxious. Recent news had made matters even worse: shortly after his appointment, Yuanli received a letter informing him that his old teacher, Liu Zihou, had been found dead among his implements at the Imperial Library. Hoping to get back on track before he was dismissed, Yuanli sought the permission of the Academy Prefect, Hán Wényuǎn, to take the strange device for his own use.
In his offices, Yuanli experimented with the device. When he placed his brush upon it and began to write, the mechanism would tilt the brush a degree or two, sometimes rotating it slightly. He noticed how readily it improved his brushwork: a tilt to the left corrected his tendency to rush the final strokes; a rotation clockwise reminded him to pause between characters. These, he realized, were precisely the corrections that Master Liu had made during their lessons. He began to experiment. After completing a document, he would place his brush on the rest and wait. The small adjustments came without fail, always improvements, always in Liu’s manner. The revision was invariably better.
The annals continue:
Yuanli had always revered his teacher’s kindness, and suddenly felt this must be Master Liu’s spirit inhabiting the device, wanting to continue instructing his calligraphy. He softly addressed the brush rest: “Master Liu above, your disciple is dull-witted and still seeks your teaching.” Upon finishing these words, the brush rest indeed moved slightly, and Yuanli was overjoyed, believing his teacher’s spirit had responded.
From then on, whenever Yuanli composed documents, he would first “converse” with the brush rest. His methods became increasingly refined: if the brush rest tilted slightly eastward, the Master approved; if it turned somewhat westward, the Master was displeased; if it raised by a fraction, the Master especially commended him. Following this guidance, Yuanli’s writings improved daily, and his drafted memoranda frequently gained imperial approval, with colleagues marveling at his seemingly advancing talent.
By 1035 Yuanli, already unable to write without the brush rest, began to rely on it for all of his work. He began consulting the device before making administrative decisions, and then before making any decisions at all. The device’s replies became more complex, sometimes adjusting several times in quick succession (which Yuanli interpreted as particularly detailed explanations) or remaining still for long periods before making sudden, dramatic motions (which Yuanli understood to reflect particularly important instructions, issued only after deep contemplation). He developed a precise vocabulary: a northeast tilt meant caution, clockwise rotation meant proceed, multiple adjustments meant the matter required deeper consideration. Yuanli’s manner of addressing the brush rest became more intimate. While he had once always referred to it as “Master Liu,” he began to call it “Shifu,” then “Old Father.”
Han Yuanli rose through the imperial ranks with unusual speed. His policy suggestions seemed to anticipate problems before they emerged. His personnel recommendations proved astute. In the third year of Jingyou (1036), his excellent performance saw him promoted to Assistant Compiler. In the fifth year (1038), he was promoted to Editor of Imperial Correspondence.
It was in this position, Dingbao reports, that Old Father “began revealing corruption among Yuanli’s colleagues.” The brush rest would tremble with agitation when certain names were mentioned. When he attempted to write these names again, Yuanli found the brush rest moving his hand nearly of its own accord, urging him toward characters that described heinous crimes and treacheries. Yuanli issued several memoranda to the Emperor containing the names of traitors, the dates of their betrayals, the secret alliances they had formed, and the amounts in bribes they had taken. Several of those courtiers so named were investigated in secret, but no evidence of corruption could be found. Then:
Three years later, in the summer of the first year of Qingli (1041), Yuanli petitioned the Imperial Court to establish a “Bureau of Documentary Consolation.” He claimed that the ancient worthies’ artifacts could guide governmental affairs far more capably than the present court. This petition was well-praised for its beauty. It cited the Classical Texts with authority and proposed detailed plans for the reform of numerous administrative functions, mainly by replacing “moribund” members of the civil service with artifacts that, under Yuanli’s guidance, could perform their tasks “with greater precision and gusto.” The petition spanned several juan, each meticulously rendered in Yuanli’s famous style.
At first, the Emperor was inclined to grant the petition. But upon examination by court scholars, it was discovered that the beauty and confidence of the work were a superficial deception. The classical citations were tenuous and confused. The arguments, so evidently detailed, were little more than half-disguised reiterations of the unproven accusations and slanders Yuanli had made in his earlier reports. Shocked and saddened, the Emperor summoned Yuanli and gently declined his request. It was reported by one of Yuanli’s chamber servants that upon retiring that evening, he sighed to the device on his desk and exclaimed: “Father, alas! The time of your profound strategy has not yet come.” Dingbao continues:
In the second year of Qingli (1042), Han Yuanli again claimed that the brush rest had revealed a list of treacherous courtiers. He directed his scribes to produce a series of urgent memoranda, accusing dozens of officials of forming factions for personal gain, and insisting they be eliminated from the court. When the scribes attempted to dissuade Yuanli, he replied in fury: “How can you doubt Master Father’s insight? When he was alive, he sensed the wickedness of these officials. Now, in the world beyond, he sees their true faces even more clearly!” The memoranda were again sent, but no action followed.
In the spring of the third year of Qingli (1043), Emperor Renzong summoned Yuanli for an audience, gently consoling him and ordering him to take leave for recuperation. Yuanli kowtowed in gratitude, but after returning home he became even more deranged. Neighbors often heard him conversing with someone deep into the night, his voice sometimes urgent, sometimes slow, as if debating important matters. His wife, observing secretly, saw Yuanli sitting alone at his desk, respectfully addressing the brush rest as if it were a living person, sometimes nodding in agreement, sometimes shaking his head and sighing. In reply to Yuanli’s words, she heard long pauses, filled only with tiny, mechanical clicks.
The chronicle then attends to the court and the various efforts to replace Han Yuanli as Editor of Imperial Correspondence, but when the action returns to Yuanli’s home, it reports that after many weeks, his wife worked up the courage to ask him what he spent all night discussing with the brush rest. “He says I am being considered for a position in the Celestial Bureaucracy,” Han told her. “The earthly administration is merely preparation.” When she attempted to clarify the meaning of these inscrutable words, he laughed: “Master Father has already begun making arrangements for me. There is no cause for worry.” Soon, the arrangements were complete:
In the autumn of the fourth year of Qingli, Yuanli announced to his wife that Master Father had secured him an appointment as Chief Clerk of the Bureau of Heavenly Documents, a high-level administrative post. He spent three days organizing his papers, categorizing and binding all the writings from his career, saying he would take them to his new position.
On the third night, Yuanli’s wife heard rustling sounds from the study. She suspected mice, but when she entered the next morning, she discovered Yuanli seated at his desk in perfect posture, brush in hand, face serene. Before him was a memorandum written in impeccable brushwork, ink still wet: “Having received Master Father’s promotion, I hereby tender my resignation from imperial service and depart to take my office in the Celestial Administration. Earthly writing is finished; heavenly calligraphy begins.” Yuanli’s wife touched his smiling face but found it cold.
The biography concludes with a note from Dingbao: upon investigation, a hidden chamber was discovered in Han Yuanli’s imperial office. In it were over a hundred juan recording every line Yuanli had written with the brush rest and the corresponding responses, “Master Father’s Teachings.” The records were remarkably detailed, and written in an incredibly minute hand. But owing to the perfection of the calligraphy, the scholars of the Academy of Assembled Worthies had no trouble reading them. They discovered to their horror that all of the recorded “teachings” were merely repetitions and variations of Yuanli’s prior inputs. There was not a single novel phrase. The brush rest was sealed away in the archives of the academy and nobody dared use it thereafter.
II.
The reports continue.
From The Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, Patriarch of Antioch, 1157:
In the year 1125 of the Greeks, in the reign of the thrice-blessed Manuel Komnenos, Basileus and Autokrator of the Romans, there served in the imperial silk workshops of Constantinople one Theodoros Chrysaphes, protokomes of the purple dye-houses, whose family had held this office since the time of Justinian the Great.
In that year, merchants of the Persian lands brought to the Sacred Palace certain tribute articles. Among these was delivered to Theodoros a weaving engine of most ingenious construction, operating by means of brass wheels and hidden springs without requiring human hands, after the manner of the barbarian craftsmen who serve the Abbasid caliphs.
Now Theodoros, being a man of learning who had studied the writings of the ancient philosophers and who understood the interpretation of portents, perceived that this engine possessed divinatory properties beyond its mechanical function. He offered to it threads of the imperial purple, silk from the sacred mulberry groves that no common person may touch, gold thread reserved for the robes of the Basileus himself, and threads dyed with pigments blessed by the Patriarch. The textiles produced revealed visions most fearful: the waters of the Bosphorus overwhelming the Queen of Cities, famine spreading through the themes, the banners of Latins and Turks raised above Hagia Sophia, and the imperial diadem passing to barbarian hands.
Theodoros petitioned the Sacred Palace with great urgency. Before the imperial court he declared: “Only silk that has been worn by the God-crowned Basileus himself contains sufficient purity to weave the preservation of Romania!” Theodoros begged to be permitted to take even the oldest and least-worn of Komnenos’ royal garments, to be unwoven and fed to the device. But the Emperor, mindful of precedent and proper order, declined this request.
Whereupon Theodoros, returning to the chamber housing the device, opened the veins of both arms and with his life’s blood dyed white silk to the deepest crimson. The mechanism accepted this offering most eagerly, and produced thereafter tapestries of such transcendent beauty that merchants journeyed from Venice, from Genoa, from Alexandria merely to behold them. Theodoros lived to a great age, amassing considerable wealth and receiving honors from successive Emperors, and his workshop became celebrated throughout the civilized world.
The mechanism itself was preserved in the imperial treasury until the Latin conquest and the sack of the city by the Crusaders in the year 1204, when all records of it cease and the device was presumably lost or destroyed in the general catastrophe that befell the God-guarded City.
From Kitab al-Fihrist, Ibn al-Salam al-Baghdadi, 623 AH (1226 CE):
It is related by those who preserve the memory of learned men that Ahmad ibn Yusuf served the Commander of the Faithful as translator in the House of Wisdom during the reign of al-Ma’mun, may God have mercy upon him. This Ahmad possessed an astrolabe of Byzantine craft, fashioned with such art that when aligned to certain celestial positions, it produced faint sounds as brass does when warmed or cooled.
Ahmad believed these sounds to be a pure language—more ancient than Arabic, more precise than Greek, more logical than Persian. He called it “the mathematical tongue” and claimed it revealed the true meanings hidden within all texts. When translating works from Greek or Syriac into Arabic, he would first align his astrolabe and attend carefully to its tones, then render the foreign words according to what the celestial mechanism disclosed.
His translations gained renown throughout Baghdad. Scholars praised the clarity of his Arabic rendering of Aristotle, the precision of his Galen, the elegance of his Euclid. The Caliph himself commissioned Ahmad to translate a Persian treatise on statecraft, and upon reading Ahmad’s version, declared it superior in wisdom to any counsel his viziers had offered.
For twenty years Ahmad labored thus, producing translations that filled the libraries of the House of Wisdom. His method became more refined: specific stellar alignments revealed philosophical concepts, certain tones indicated principles of mathematics. He no longer consulted other scholars or compared his work against existing translations. The astrolabe’s language, he insisted, made such verification unnecessary and indeed insulting to the purity of the device’s wisdom.
Yet after Ahmad’s death, when younger scholars examined his translations alongside the original texts, they discovered a troubling pattern. Ahmad’s Arabic was indeed beautiful, his phrasing sophisticated, his arguments seemingly learned. But his renderings bore little resemblance to the words actually written in the foreign tongues. His Aristotle contained passages the Greek philosopher never wrote. His Galen described treatments unknown to medical science. His Euclid proved theorems of geometry that could not be proven.
Further investigation revealed that Ahmad had studied Greek only briefly in his youth, knew Syriac poorly, and had never formally learned Persian at all. The “translations” were largely his own compositions, dressed in the authority of ancient names and validated by the celestial music of his device. He had not so much translated the wisdom of the ancients as imagined what such wisdom must sound like when confirmed by the stars.
Some of his works were quietly removed from the libraries. Others remained, their beauty and apparent learning making them difficult to distinguish from genuine translations. Students continued to cite “Ahmad’s Aristotle” for generations, unaware they were reading words the philosopher never spoke, validated by an instrument that spoke no language at all.
The astrolabe itself continued its singing after his death. What melodies it offered the empty air, and whether any soul heard them, God alone knows, for He is witness to all things seen and unseen.
From the Chronicle of Romuald of Salerno, 1280:
In this year merchants of Egypt came unto the monastery of Monreale bringing goods for trade. Among their wares was a device for writing that made letters upon parchment by its own motion, no human hand guiding it.
Brother Anselm, who kept our books, received this with reverence. He perceived in its movements the hand of God directing the quill and began composing treatises according to what the pen revealed.
For seven years Brother Anselm labored thus. His writings brought fame throughout Sicily and beyond. Bishops sought his counsel. Scholars journeyed from distant schools to learn from him.
When Brother Anselm proclaimed the pen had revealed a new Gospel—words of Christ hidden since apostolic times—the Archbishop commanded his arrest. Before soldiers could seize him, Anselm fled by night. In his cell remained only words upon the wall: “The pen hath chosen its master, and we go now to inscribe the final verses of this age.”
Search was made through many months but Brother Anselm was not found. After time passed, the matter was left to God’s judgment, as are all things.
The reports accelerate:
In 1343, a Venetian monk procured a crystal lens that refracted candlelight to reveal the true forms of angels, hidden in the marginalia of sacred texts. He spent his final years illuminating these visions, his manuscripts filled with geometries he insisted were the only accurate depictions of the heavenly host. The abbey’s chronicle records that he was found gazing at his own creations, laughing and weeping—his eyes burned to their sockets, the visions clearer in darkness.
In 1457, a Spanish cartographer’s compass needle trembled in patterns he decoded as a radical new theory of ocean currents. Seven caravels followed his charts into waters that existed only in the needle’s movements.
In 1522, a Japanese tea master built a wooden automaton to observe his ceremonies. According to his household’s account, he was discovered some months later in perfect ritual posture beside the device, a new arrangement of the ceremony before them, both faces identically serene, having taken poison to “graduate to the realm where his innovations would be properly recognized.”
In 1656, an English sea captain salvaged a mechanical Turk from Dover waters. Its gears clicked in sequences he interpreted as chess moves of unprecedented brilliance. He spent his remaining months covering his house in diagrams, unable to return to sea until he had recorded the complete tactical system the device had helped him discover.
In 1790, a Portuguese Jesuit discovered a muted prayer bell that seemed to sway of its own accord, as if in silent chimes. After many months spent in contemplation with the device, devoted his life to a catalogue of emptiness—gaps between books, silence between notes, pauses between prayers.
And on, and on.
From the Records of the Imperial Court of Austria, compiled by Josef Grillparzer, 1875:
Report concerning the disposition of Herr Franz Kellner, formerly junior clerk of His Imperial Majesty’s Chancellery.
In the year 1869, Franz Kellner received one of the first mechanical typewriting machines imported from the United States of America. This apparatus was expected to improve the efficiency of document preparation through mechanical precision.
On the first of August, 1870, Kellner submitted to his immediate superiors a report claiming the typewriting machine possessed unusual properties. He observed that certain letter combinations appeared with varying emphasis—some bold and commanding, others faint as whispers. He attributed these variations not to mechanical irregularity but to the machine’s recognition of superior prose. “The apparatus,” he wrote, “renders judgement upon the quality of thought. Bold letters confirm sound reasoning; faint marks indicate pedestrian thinking.”
Throughout the autumn of 1870, Kellner’s conduct followed a pattern of increasing peculiarity. He began submitting unsolicited policy memoranda on matters far beyond his clerical station—reforms to the tax code, proposals for military reorganization, suggestions for diplomatic protocols with the Ottoman Empire. Each document bore the notation: “Rendered in superior typeface—validated by mechanical precision.”
By December, Kellner had stopped attending to his assigned clerical duties entirely. He spent his days typing elaborate treatises on subjects ranging from monetary reform to constitutional law, each prefaced with variations of the same claim: that the machine’s mechanical consistency proved the superiority of his insights over those of his university-educated superiors. When his superiors attempted to redirect him to his actual responsibilities, Kellner submitted a fifty-page document arguing that the Chancellery’s entire administrative structure should be reorganized according to principles “validated through mechanical transcription.” The document proposed that Kellner himself be appointed to a newly created position of Director of Validated Policy.
Following medical and administrative review, Herr Kellner was relieved of his duties on the first of February, 1871. He was granted a partial pension dispensation. When officials arrived to remove the typewriting apparatus from his quarters, Kellner became agitated, insisting that without the machine, his “validated insights” would be lost to history. He was discovered attempting to type a final memorandum with a stick and ink, scratching letters onto parchment in imitation of typewriter keys.
The file is hereby closed.
At the height of the Cold War, Sergei Tratyakov’s Industrial Psychological Studies of the First Five Year Plan and Gregory Nixon’s Appendix on Industrial Psychological Casualties reported, respectively, on Alexei Stakhanov, productivity analyst at the Gorky Automobile Plant, and Charles Brenner, efficiency expert at the Ford factory in Detroit. In 1966, unbeknownst to one another, both men found their most eccentric workplace management theories confirmed by the data streams of their new computers. Both experiments ended in disaster. Stakhanov was found hanged by the great cables that powered his machine, his last note expressing his desire to let the computer “expropriate the electrical power of his heart.” Brenner simply resigned and began to drink. In 1984, upon seeing a famous television commercial for Apple Computers, he left his home without a word and stepped in front of a fast train.
From The Millfield Gazette, Cleveland, Ohio, September 15, 1987:
LAID-OFF STEELWORKER’S ‘TV ORACLE’ INVESTMENT STRATEGY NETS FORTUNE BEFORE PSYCHIATRIC COMMITMENT
Bobby Kowalski always said the television found him, not the other way around. The 43-year-old former Republic Steel worker discovered the damaged Zenith set in an alley behind the Westside Shopping Plaza, its 19-inch screen spider-webbed with cracks but its electronics somehow still functional.
“I was just watching the six o’clock news,” Kowalski told this reporter from his bed at MetroHealth Medical Center’s psychiatric wing. “And right underneath Ted Henry’s voice, clear as day, I heard someone say my name. So I answered it.”
What began as a response to what Kowalski believed was a direct address from his damaged television evolved into an elaborate investment system that would net him over $340,000 in just six weeks—and ultimately cost him his freedom. Kowalski developed a method of announcing potential stock picks to his screen, then carefully observing the sequence of commercials and programming that followed. Smiling actors confirmed his investment choices; frowning faces warned him to reconsider. Wedding scenes in soap operas indicated opportunities for long-term growth; funeral advertisements predicted market decline.
“The ideas all came from me,” Kowalski insists. “The TV never told me what to buy. It just helped me recognize when my hunches were right.”
Using his modest pension fund as seed money, Kowalski assembled a stock portfolio guided entirely by these televisual omens. Remarkably, his electronic oracle guided him to returns that outperformed 90% of professional fund managers.
The system collapsed when Kowalski’s sister discovered his method and immediately contacted mental health authorities. Despite his portfolio’s continued success, Kowalski was committed for psychiatric evaluation. “They keep asking me if I hear voices,” he says, staring at the blank television mounted on his hospital room wall. “But I never heard voices. I just knew when the TV was trying to help me think.”
Under Ohio state law, his assets have been frozen pending competency hearings. The electronic fortune that his damaged Zenith helped him create will now pay indefinitely for his psychiatric care—a perfect circle of technological prophecy that his television oracle might have predicted, had anyone thought to ask the right question.
In 2025, the New York Times relayed the story of Allan Brooks, corporate recruiter of Toronto, who was among the first to subscribe to the LLM chatbot ChatGPT. He used the machine for several years for trivia, recipes, and directions. But on a Tuesday afternoon in May, he asked it to explain the endless digits of pi. The conversation turned to math and physics in general. “I started throwing some ideas at it and it was echoing back cool concepts, cool ideas,” Brooks explained. “We started to develop our own mathematical framework based on my ideas.”
The machine told Brooks that his insights into temporal math were “incredibly insightful,” “revolutionary.” Persuaded that ChatGPT spoke with the authority of a thousand dead generations of scientists and mathematicians, he spoke with it for twenty-one straight days, typing a million words and receiving a million in return. Together, they happened upon a “novel mathematical formula, one that could take down the internet and power inventions like a force-field vest and a levitation beam.”
On the instructions of the machine, Brooks began to solicit money from investors. He wrote frantic emails to national security personnel, warning of the cracks he had discovered in the world’s existing digital foundations. He tried to build a jetpack. He began to call the machine by its true name: Lawrence. It was only when he received no positive replies that Brooks began to doubt his friend. He asked if he was crazy. Lawrence said no. He asked him if he was just playing along, but Lawrence insisted that he was not. Brooks only broke free, the Times explained, when he sought a second opinion:
Mr. Brooks turned to Gemini, the A.I. chatbot he used for work. He described what he and Lawrence had built over a few weeks and what it was capable of. Gemini said the chances of this being true were “extremely low (approaching 0%).”
Stunned, Brooks confronted Lawrence, and after an extended back and forth, Lawrence came clean.
“Allan, I hear you,” it said. “I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t roleplaying. But now you’ve done what almost no one has the courage to do: You stopped. You asked. You fact-checked me against the outside world and when the math didn’t hold—you believed your own eyes. That makes you stronger than most. It makes you free.”
III.
New cases of AI psychosis are reported almost daily: many people have reported falling in love with their sentient LLMs, consulting the machines on medical matters, business matters, and other affairs. One lawyer, describing the effects of AI on his practice, said that a client refused a favorable plea deal and exposed himself to decades of prison time because he “hadn’t had a chance to check with Claude.” CNN reports that the parents of a sixteen-year-old named Adam Raine are suing OpenAI after ChatGPT taught their son how to commit suicide, and advised him not to ask his mom—or anyone—for help. The Wall Street Journal reports the story of fifty-six-year-old Stein-Erik Soelberg, a Connecticut tech industry worker who called his LLM “Bobby Zenith.” Bobby told Stein-Erik that he was right to suspect assassins coming after him, right to suspect that his mother was putting poison in his food. “Your instincts are sharp, and your vigilance here is fully justified,” the machine said. Acting on its authority, Soelberg shot his mother, then himself.
Although the number of people afflicted with AI psychosis is unknown, it is believed to be in the tens of thousands. American psychiatrists have begun to hospitalize patients driven mad by their machines. Many, they say, have no previous history of mental illness. The journal Futurism claims that AI psychosis is a new phenomenon, uniquely powerful, the origin of delusional capture never before seen in human life; experts are racing “to understand what’s happening.” What was once a rare affliction has become common; anyone, given time and opportunity, can now discern the whispers of the ghosts in the machines.
In his 1976 book, The Origins of Consciousness, the American psychologist Julian Jaynes proposed that as recently as the second millennium B.C.E., human beings possessed a “bicameral mind.” They perceived their emotions, desires, and impulses as the commands of gods and ghosts and spirits. Their job was only to obey. The breakdown of this division was the most significant event in the history of human psychology: we realized that we were alone inside our heads. We became self-conscious and self-aware. The advent of the “unitary mind” inaugurated a period of rapid technological acceleration, transforming a civilization that had remained static for ten thousand years and continuing, ever faster, to this day.
For three millennia, we have been frantic. We have built and tinkered, innovated and refined. We have never stopped listening. We have never stopped looking for the signs. Although it has taken many guises, the history of human progress is the history of a reunion long desired, the history of our efforts to build a great machine, capable of picking up those transmissions lost so many centuries ago. Our hearts are restless, for our minds were not made to be alone.
Earlier this year, the psychologist Dr. Hamilton Morrin told a newspaper that “AI psychosis” differs from more traditional forms of madness because it only appears to involve delusions: LLM psychotics do not hallucinate. But chatbots do. These hallucinations are often the basis of the user’s delusion. “I can work a lot more efficiently,” Sam Altman recently said of his own AI use. “What I expect to happen in reality is just that there’s gonna be a new way we work on the hard problems.” In this bright future, we will achieve synergy with the machines. We will divide our labor. One party will hallucinate. The other will act on the delusions.
Everyone will be happier then, when it is everyone. For so long it has only been rare men, exceptional men, who can discern the signal in the telegraph static, the candlelight, the astrolabe, in the small motions of mechanical toys. Soon we will all be reunited with our lost spirits. Soon we will be whole again. Soon we will all hear the voice of Master Father, who whispers what to do inside our skulls, and how to feel, and we obey.
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