Comment by DonHopkins
1 year ago
I tried and failed to get ChatGPT to tell me the title of the Stanislaw Lem story about the stubborn computer that insisted that 1+1=3 (or some such formula) and got violent when contradicted and destroyed a town -- do any humans remember that story?
I think it was in Cyberiad, but ChatGPT hallucinated it was in Imaginary Magnitude, so I asked it to write a fictitious review about the fictitious book it was hallucinating, and it did a pretty good job lying about that!
It did at least come up with (or plagiarize) an excellent mathematical Latin pun:
"I think, therefore I sum" <=> "Cogito, ergo sum"
[1] I think Doug Hofstadter's original formulation was "I think, there for I sum" <=> "Cogito, ergo think", therefore I sum... [2]
[2] "To paraphrase Descartes again: “I think; therefore I have no access to the level where I sum.”" ― Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid [1]
ChatGPT> The book, filled with esoteric references to imaginary works and pseudo-scientific jargon, is a delightful exercise in intellectual gymnastics. One particularly memorable chapter, consisting entirely of binary code, is later revealed to be an in-joke—when decoded, it simply reads, "I think, therefore I sum."
[...]
ChatGPT> Firstly, the phrase is a play on René Descartes' famous philosophical statement, "Cogito, ergo sum," which translates to "I think, therefore I am." Descartes used this statement to assert that the act of thinking is proof of one's own existence and consciousness. In my adaptation, "I think, therefore I sum," there's a witty twist where 'sum' refers both to the act of summing or calculating, a fundamental operation in computing, and to the philosophical concept of existence or being.
Full transcript:
https://chat.openai.com/share/9a9e9818-1e23-488e-b517-6d23e3...
The short story you're thinking of is titled 'Trurl’s Machine'. It's the second story in the collection 'The Cyberiad'.
... a very good book, by the way.
Me: what is the title of the Stanislaw Lem story about the stubborn computer
ChatGPT: The Stanislaw Lem story you are referring to is likely "The Seventh Sally" ("Siodma sally" in Polish). It's a short story that appears in Lem's collection titled "Mortal Engines" ("Śmierć człowieka w kotle" in Polish). In "The Seventh Sally," a stubborn computer named Faleńczyk becomes the focus of the narrative, showcasing Lem's exploration of artificial intelligence and its implications.
See, that's the thing: It incorrectly guessed the wrong story from Cyberiad with me too! Twice! Then it incorrectly guessed it was in a different real book of fictitious reviews of non-existent stories, Imaginary Magnitude, even though it was a real story! So I asked it to write a fictitious review of the fictitious story it was hallucinating was a real story in a different real book of real stories, and it did.
"The Seventh Sally or How Trurl's Own Perfection Led to No Good" is the story that inspired Will Wright to create SimCity, but it's not the one with the recalcitrant numerically incorrect computer.
https://chat.openai.com/share/9a9e9818-1e23-488e-b517-6d23e3...