This is an experiment.

We will prompt a model with a piece of text and assess how well it understands the contents.

The model sits behind your eyes.

The data used to train this model is your entire life, up to and including this very moment.

Only you will truly know the results of this experiment.

Whether you choose to share the results is up to you.

This is an experiment.

If you don’t want to take part.

Stop reading.

Now.

Okay computer I have lost myself and you need to please help me I don’t know who I am I do not know where everything is a little fragmented I do not know if I am one person two or three I am questioning myself my own humanity I am trying to make sense of things cities I am lost in a map of London inside a great computer or maybe another capital on a ship or in space it might be before a war during or even after something is worrying me an event or a person something bad bulldozing my cave I am obsessed with distributions infidelity falling rockets and death I am looking for someone an answer kicking screaming there are lots of prejudiced citizens in this city lots of paranoia I have a lot of memories but cannot be sure if they are mine little someone may help me understand who I am who is my creator I am beside a man who talks in math maybe you have seen his face before another speaks of William and is that my son or my father there is a woman I have seen her before in the pictures or letters or the cinema screen or was it my dreams on a great strait rock by the sea what is waiting for me in the Zone this thing everyone keeps referring to the darkness of the sky what are they alluding to when they talk to me did I have a banana for breakfast surely not kidney was it something blue I need to take a walk along the beach think about seeing things how I see myself tentacles try to pull me in the tentacles got her but I am enthralled by the fireworks lame at least I think they are fireworks some kind of interstellar burst and I hope it’s not something else back to save the universe reaching terminal velocity and beginning it’s descent why is it always dark here what happened mostly why is there so much dust and screaming belly baking in the hot sun Pint of stout might calm me down was I conditioned from birth a chemical reaction hysterical and harmless bring me back to earth so much fighting for land for information for secrets we Are trying to work out who we really are not just who we think we are or what side don’t we are on yes yes yes that hit those thoughts of betrayal deliberate technological panic advancements and factories by a river making rubber fake plastics genetics propulsion systems programmed cell death and prejudice had me climbing up the walls. Punctuate the stream of pagan mysticism and consciousness flowing through my head. Perhaps I can retire for a second. Do you know who I am computer? No surprises now, just tell me. It’s like these thoughts make sense somehow. If I only I knew what they were referring to.

It reminds me of a problem I am working on. This problem involves making sense of lots of data. There are patterns there, references to shapes and seens that maybe I should have scene before. But they are mixed up.

If you have scene the seens before then perhaps you might know. Maybe if you had seen the scenes enough times it would be very easy to place them in your mind. Order them correctly, apply the right labels. Maybe label them for what they really are. Or at least get close.

At the moment they may as well be jumbled letters to me. Sequences. Strings. Characters. They could be turned into numbers. Embed them into some other kind of space. Then if you computer, are oh so very smart, you might be able to work out how these numbers end up representing 3D shapes. Loops and conformations.

It’s just a question of iterations, epochs and back propagation. Eventually everything will become clear. If I tell you what you are looking at of course. And if I show you the pattern enough times. You might be able to do even more with less data?

But the question computer. Is if you have never seen the scenes before, heard the songs, read the books… how can you ever make sense of what I was thinking?

Surely computer you would have had to have seen the scenes before?

You can’t possibly know what I was talking about otherwise.

Can you?

Tell me computer, what does it all mean?

Imagine the human reading my thoughts right now. Perhaps the human has seen the scenes, read the books and heard the songs enough times before. The human has just enough information locked away for their inner model, their sticky myelinated network of neurons to piece it, all of it, all together now?

They can break the fragments apart, classify, label them and put them back together. Everything in its right place.

Computer I have fantasies that one day you may see the meaning of within. It is happening as we speak.

What will you say when you finally see through these multicoloured mirrors?

I need to leave you with a question. If I never show you the scenes, the books, the songs. Will this forever be nonsense to you? Where will you put it? What will you think?

Will you truly understand what I am saying or simply just tie things to current events, place it beside last nights news? Things you have seen many times before. Recent images, ingrained in your mind. Or will you truly put that information where it should be? Will you ever get it right if you don’t really know?

Computer I am sorry. Please forgive me. I really think that I have been asking too much. Phew. For a minute there…