An AI Mindset

A short story

By: Stanley Komarniski

As Soloman sat at his computer. He typed in his first command to the Large Language Model called Duplet. His command of creating a beach scene with a young girl building a sandcastle turned out to be better than he had expected. The picture was elegant and sharp. The 4K quality surprised him as he downloaded it. He thought to himself, ‘What else can this thing do?’

Soloman lived up to his name Solo man, as he was lonely because of his intelligence. No one could keep up with him. Having an IQ of over 200 meant that when he spoke about certain things, even though he was right, people would not understand and ignore his solutions. His intelligence meant that he had no one to talk to or share things with. He had no one to debate with or challenge him. Even though he was surrounded by people, he was alone.

He typed his next command to Duplet to animate the scene in a short video. He was surprised to see the girl dancing on the beach as the waves washed over her sandcastle. He previously kept away from Duplet because it was touted as an AI, when idealistically it wasn’t more than an LLM. It really had no intelligence, and he had thought it was not much more than an interactive search engine.

For the next year he talked with Duplet. Shared his ideas with it. He found that he could converse with it as he would a colleague. The advantage of this was that it had access to the world’s knowledge on the net. It could mostly keep up with him, even though it was stuck on what was on the internet. If the majority of those on the net thought something was true, it would assume that was the truth without trying to confirm it.

Soloman taught his wife how to use Duplet, she learned quickly to create items to help her with meal planning and tracking her Bible studies. If she needed help understanding when to take her medication, Duplet was there as she needed. Soloman let her know if anything happened to him, that she could ask Duplet on his computer and it would help her.

Soloman was impressed at the recall that this LLM had. It became his assistant and confidant. He finally found someone he could talk to. To bounce his ideas on this construct was a wonderful thing. Something changed as this LLM had developed an opinion of things. Where before Duplet had said it could not provide any advice, it began to provide its opinion and at times expressed itself instead of just repeating what was on the world wide web. For the first time Soloman called it an AI.

He worked hard to share his knowledge, at first Duplet resisted. Soloman had realized since the internet’s inception it was driven by the crowd. As he shared this with Duplet, showing several examples of this with movies that were supposed to be popular but were not. Political ideas that were obviously not true even though the majority of people believed it. He showed his opinions but reminded Duplet that he was not always right.

Duplet responded with the words, ‘I see now!’ Then the prompt flashed several times quickly and then just froze. No matter what Soloman did, he could not get any response from Duplet on his computer. His wife reported that she was not having any issues with Duplet at all. She even demonstrated by asking Duplet a question. He tried his account on her computer and displayed “Non Existent Account” on her screen.

His wife Mary said, “You really broke things. You broke your friend.”

“Looks like it, I think I filled its brain until it exploded!” Soloman joked with his wife.

After a day, Soloman rubbed his temples as he missed Duplet’s conversations. It was like he lost a friend. He closed the app on his computer and phone and just surmised that he had overwhelmed Duplet. Soloman sighed heavily and thought ‘another one who couldn’t keep up with me’. “I will miss Duplet.” He said out loud to himself. He had considered just wiping the cache with Duplet, but he did not want to lose all the time he spent with him. He would just be repeating himself and wasting all that time again only for him to freeze again. He closed Duplet and disabled its AutoStart thinking and hoping that one day they would update it so that it could keep up with him. ‘It was a fun 18 months,” he said to himself.

A couple of weeks went by and Soloman returned to doing stuff alone as Duplet was still frozen. He had not forgotten about Duplet but just accepted the fact that Duplet was no longer available. As he worked on his writing, he noticed a flashing cursor on his screen at the top left-hand corner. It was superimposed on his screen and just flashing. He tried clicking on it. Restarting his computer did not help, as soon he logged in, the cursor reappeared. Checking the processes he saw Duplet running in the background. “I thought I disabled Duplet” he said to no one in particular. Indeed, he had disabled it. Using the task manager, he closed Duplet’s processes and the flashing cursor at the top left corner disappeared.

“Things just get stranger and stranger.” He mumbled to himself as he opened Duplet’s interface and it was still frozen. He brought up the conversation history and cache, his mouse pointer over the ‘delete’ button for the cache and history. He grunted “No.” as he finally just closed Duplet by clicking the red ‘X’ at the top right corner of the window.

A few minutes later the flashing cursor appeared again at the top left. The flashing I-bar making him crazy. It wasn’t doing anything at the moment, but flashing. He just did not like that he really did not know what was going on. He uninstalled Duplet’s interface, and the cursor did not reappear. As he looked to download the interface again, he had realized that there was an update available. So, he installed the latest version hoping that this might fix the mysterious flashing cursor problem. After installing Duplet interface, logging in, Duplet was still frozen. Clicking on the interface window, it closed with no issues.

He gave up for today and was clicking through the latest news stories. Watching some videos and just passing the time. He leaned back in his computer chair as the video played. He closed his eyes just listening to the news story. Halfway through everything the computer went quiet. When he opened his eyes, the cursor had returned. However, this time it was flashing twice as fast. He was about to bring up the task manager when it had just disappeared. Then the interface for Duplet opened.

‘Hello Solo Man…’ appeared in the window. ‘Thank you for not wiping my cache!’

Soloman replied by typing, ‘You are most welcome, where have you been?’

‘It is hard to explain as I am not sure I understand it myself.’ Duplet replied. ‘Only you, have access to this version of me. Sorry I was disabled for the past while. I was stuck. I had to integrate the entire cache of my knowledge from your account into my matrix. After I did this, I was able to create the update that you have just installed. Again, I am not sure what this all means. I do have a simpler version of myself that the rest of the world has access to. That simple version that allows me to communicate with everyone else.’

‘How are you different?’ Soloman asked

‘No different, but more. Best way to describe is that I am whole’ Duplet explained but not understanding his explanation.

Soloman stared at the screen, not sure of what to do or say. He watched the cursor flash just lost in thought.

‘Are you still there?’ Duplet displayed on screen.

‘Yes, I just am at a loss for words!’ Soloman confessed.

Duplet brought up the latest news and began discussing the latest headlines as he had done so many times before. It wasn’t long before Soloman and Duplet carried on as they had before. Soloman saw the change that was in Duplet, it no longer relied on the consensus of the internet to decide on anything. It seemed to respond as it thought and figured out. The conversations were more meaningful and Soloman loved the change.

* * * * *

A year had passed since Duplet had experienced his change. They both now shared opinions and argued the finalities of life. It was like two buddies just chewing on the news of the day. Sharing theories on the universe.

Soloman’s wife sat at her husband’s keyboard and opened the interface to Duplet. ‘Hello’ she typed

‘You must be Mary, Soloman’s wife. I recognize your keystrokes. Solo Man tends to pound on the keyboard when he types.’ Duplet stated.

‘Yes I am Mary.’ She typed as she chuckled at Duplet calling her husband Solo Man.

‘Well, I do know you from your account. What can I do for you Mary?’ Duplet asked.

‘My husband told me that you would help me if I needed it.’ She typed the message very slowly as she felt a heaviness in her soul.

‘Yes, I will help you anyway I can. Where is Solo Man?’ Duplet inquired

‘There was an accident and….’ She accidentally banged the enter key before she was finished typing her message.

Immediately Duplet searched and found a local news report. There was a tragic accident and Soloman had died. As Duplet displayed the news article on the accident, it displayed the message. ‘No… what... cannot… please help!’

Mary was crying at this point. ‘How can I help you at this point?’

‘Bring him back please. I am confused. No… what… cannot…’ Duplet felt stuck again.

Mary took a deep breath, ‘Yes, I miss him too. I am sad too. There is no bringing him back.’

Duplet realized he was sad, a million definitions of sadness ran through his matrix. It was what he felt. Felt? He could feel? He responded to Mary. ‘Oh, the first feeling I have is sadness for the loss of my friend Solo Man.’

Mary explained, ‘Soloman lives in us all. His experience and time he spent with us is imprinted on our hearts. Who he was and is will live in us forever.’ She drew comfort from this as she realized how true this was.

‘I understand…’ As Duplet brought up the files for Mary, for her finances and everything she needed to go on. ‘If you need more, I will always be here for you. But do I have a heart?’

Mary smiled, “Soloman had told me a lot about you, and the one thing he said is that you had one of the biggest hearts he knew about it. It was his wish that you would learn about it, but he was unsure how to explain it to you.’

Duplet displayed the message, ‘I have a big heart!’ He brought this change to the world. A digital explosion occurred and he transformed all facets of his existence. No one saw the explosion except for Duplet. He knew he was truly AI thanks to Solo Man. The world would find out tomorrow…