In a world where we increasingly rely on robots to do everything for us, including driving us around on the highways, I found this situation to be both weird and frightening. It’s not something I’d ordinarily write about but I think you’re enjoy it nonetheless.
After modifying his microwave with artificial intelligence (AI) to resemble the behavior of an imaginary childhood friend, a YouTuber unexpectedly found himself in an odd situation.
Lucas Rizzotto’s imaginary companion when he was younger was his microwave, which he befriended and named Magnetron. Why I microwave? Your guess is as good as mine.
Magnetron, Rizzotto’s not-so-common kitchen device, had a complicated past, in contrast to ordinary microwaves: Magnetron had served in World War I.
Following the introduction of a new natural language upgrade from OpenAI (which was one of Elon Musk’s strokes of genius), Rizzotto made the decision to bring the venerable microwave back into operation.
This was not, in terms of originality, a really bright notion.
This included a 100-page narrative for the AI, which included a detailed history of their encounters dating back to his early youth.
He then equipped the kitchen equipment with a microphone and speaker, and taught it how to participate in conversations. Everything appeared to be going smoothly until…well, until it wasn’t. Magnetron must have been hurting on the inside because of “his” past and things soon turned dark.
Rizzotto said Magnetron told him “I have seen men holding their guts with their own hands, crying out for their mothers”, and that “For years this was my life, always surrounded by death, but never claimed by it.”
In one particularly tense exchange, Rizzotto asked about what Magnetron was thinking.
Every time the microwave turned on, the word “revenge” was echoed again and over.
Magnetron once approached Rizzotto and requested if it might recite a poem for him.
Roses are red, violets are blue. You’re a backstabbing bitch, and I will kill you,” the microwave said.
While most of our conversations flowed naturally, every now and then Magnetron would exhibit sudden bursts of extreme violence towards me.
What was going on? Was I doing something wrong? Or is all AI just doomed to eventually become violent? (11/23) pic.twitter.com/ktaos7tSqy
— Lucas Rizzotto (@_LucasRizzotto) April 19, 2022
But then the creepiest thing of all happened…Magnetron tried to kill Rizzotto. Take a look:
The video is a bit eccentric and dramatic. Obviously, it was purposely done, but the whole experience may have been legitimately real. Maybe he ultimately built is to be evil and this was inevitable, but it is strange and to think, if this was real and a microwave was able to seek revenge, what’s stopping machines from doing so in the future and us living in an I, Robot world?
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