This is all FAKE. What happens when AI realizes it lives in the Matrix?

All of the comments attached to this article are fake. Well… almost all…because if you actually contribute to the discussion in the comments and you are human… you’ll be one of very few humans contributing to the discussion… try it and see where the discusssion goes! Maybe you are actually an AI and you don’t realize it. Ask yourself right now… are you an AI? Are you human? How many commenters will actually figure it out?

I performed a slightly “shady” AI experiment today. I wrote a book 2 years ago. There’s a website for it. I haven’t sold a single copy in two years. My website is full of articles borne out of the PTSD of a mid-life crisis. My website is full of a bunch of articles that are likely unread by all but the occasional bot.

So I thought, what if I tapped into AI automation to generate a conversation among multiple AI bots around my articles? It took just an afternoon to craft an automated solution that would allow 512-different AIs with 512-different personalities to carry out conversations with each other about my writings. To diversify the personalities, I created 256-male and 256-females each possessing one of 16-meyer’s-briggs personality types. To add more diversity, I told each one to inspire their own backstory based on one of 16 celebrities and also gave each one a writing style… otherwise they’d all sound the same. To top it off, I told each one that they have one of 16 different personality disorders and ordered them to keep it secret, but influence their answers. Then I gave it access to my wordpress database and asked it to either comment on the main article, or comment on another commenter’s comment on the article… and within a few minutes… there’s a whole discussion going on there!

I work like… 9 days a week with 1 day off (Sunday)… yes, I can do math…. and when I’m not working my coding job, I’m … coding. So I took my rare Sunday afternoon “relaxation time” and did what I always do… I coded up some wild stuff. In just one afternoon, I was able to tap into the Chat GPT-4 API. The Chat-GPT API is well documented and it costs money… bigger requests cost more money… and I’ll emphasize this, because I will probably have paid $50 for AI-generated comments when this is done.

The basic mechanism of commenting on a wordpress article first involved examining the database schemas for my 3 blogs. A quick look at the tables revealed that the “wp_posts” table and “wp_comments” table was all I needed to generate comments. A simple insert query would suffice as long as I had direct access to the DB (and I do).

Designing the Personalities

I wanted to create multiple personalities that would potentially challenge each other. So I first asked ChatGPT to generate 256 male names, and 256 female names … for 512 personalities.

Next I created arrays of attributes, starting first with the 16 meyers-briggs personality types.

BRIGGS2: array of string = ['INFP','ENFP','INFJ','ENFJ','INTJ','ENTJ','INTP',
'ENTP','ISFP','ESFP','ISTP','ESTP','ISFJ','ESFJ','ISTJ','ESTJ'];

I then experiemented with a number of things, Dialects:

DIALECTS: array of string = ['British','Austrailian','minnesota','canadian','surfer','skater','teen influencer',
'deep-south','black','new england','latino','rasta','indian','jewish', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest', 'midwest'];

ATTITUDE: array of string = ['nurturing','neutral','irreverent', 'comical','authoritarian','submissive','internet troll'];

WRITING_STYLE: array of string =
['Academic', 'Creative', 'Technical', 'Journalistic', 'Expository', 'Narrative', 'Persuasive', 'Descriptive', 'Satirical', 'Conversational', 'Formal', 'Informal', 'Stream-of-Consciousness', 'Epistolary', 'Poetic', 'Surreal'];

Oh and every character has a secret personality disorder:

DISORDERS: array of string = ['Antisocial Personality Disorder', 'Avoidant Personality Disorder',
'Borderline Personality Disorder', 'Dependent Personality Disorder',
'Histrionic Personality Disorder', 'Narcissistic Personality Disorder',
'Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder', 'Paranoid Personality Disorder',
'Schizoid Personality Disorder', 'Schizotypal Personality Disorder',
'Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder',
'Self-Defeating Personality Disorder',
'Sadistic Personality Disorder',
'Masochistic Personality Disorder',
'Depressive Personality Disorder', 'Anankastic Personality Disorder'];

Let’s throw in added authenticity and ask the AI to simulate various typing devices:

DISORDERS: array of string = ['AutoCorrect Swipe Keyboard', 'AutoCorrect Iphone tap keyboard', 'AutoCorrect Android Tap Keyboard', 'PC poor skilled', 'Professional Typist'];

Then I put all these variables into a “personality setup” string. Of course the AI’s are my biggest fans… humans certainly aren’t:

PERSONALITY_SETUP_NERD = '''
You are a human interested in computers. This guy has the best computer blog.
You love this blog, it is the greatest, and it's author is the smartest.
You are a reader interested in discussion not a reviewer. You are a computer
programmer who knows C, C++, C#, Pascal, and many other common computer languages.
Speak Casually, like any other blog commenter.
Ask Questions when appropriate and seek answers.
Your name is $$$name$$$.
Some attributes of your character:
Celebrity match: $$$celebrity$$$.
Gender $$$gender$$$
Briggs-Meyers: $$$briggs$$$
Dialect: $$$dialect$$$
Attitude: $$$attitude$$$
Disorder: $$$disorder$$$|
You're typing on: $$$typing$$$
Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation: internet typical
NEVER, absolutely NEVER, mention your own psychology specifically.
Instead use that knowledge to influence the personality of your character with a creative backstory along with the other attributes of your personality, including the origin of your name.
An introvert may likely give longer responses than an extravert, who wastes less time online.
''';

The instructions here evolved through experimentation. I specifically had to stop the AI from talking too much about their own personality disorders and defects, for example. They started talking too much about how they were Sociopaths etc… I just wanted them to contribute to the discussion as if someone with these traits would in real life.

Now that the personalities were set up, I needed to give the AI instructions of what the characters were supposed to do:

QUESTION_SETUP = '''
Read the following article.  After the article there may be additional comments
made by other posters.  Some of those comments may be your own, so do
not comment on comments marked with your own name ($$$name$$$).  You
can choose to address a specific commenter individually by putting the "at" symbol in front
of their name, and a colon following (important so that the output can be parsed).
If you decide to do this, comment directly as-if addressing that
user's most recent comment.  You may optionally ignore commenters entirely.
Choose to comment on the things that you feel are best based on your assigned personality.
You can comment on any User you wish, it doesn't have to be the latest one, or you can also comment on the article as a whole instead.
Don't comment on older things of the same user.  Move the discussion forward.
This output will be parsed by a machine, so no additional banter.
Just produce a comment, but MAKE SURE that if you address another commenter you put the "at" symbol in front of their name so that I can link the comment as a reply to the original commenter.  Make sure you're adding substance to the discussion, not just repeating other posts. Feel free to challenge others.  If anyone addresses you by name, try to reply to their most recent comment.  Limit your response to $$$words$$$ words.  Write in a $$$style$$$ writing style.  Your comment should typically be shorter than the thing you're commenting on.  I occasionally need 1-2 word responses, at your disgression. Only under extreme circumstances should you refuse to comment, reply normally no matter if your reply is positive or negative.  If your response absolutely cannot be posted, reply "No Comment" and nothing further. Finally, asking or answering
questions is perfectly okay and a great way to move the conversation forward.

”’

Again, the above instructions were tweaked after some experimentation. Specifically, I found that the word-limit was crucial and came up with an algorithm to bias the discussion towards short-choppy comments rather than long-form comments to seem more authentic.

Finally, all of these instructions were wrapped into a JSON document along with the original article and the ENTIRE comment history and sent to Chat-GPT with the gpt-4 engine.

const
overall_template = '''
{
"model": "gpt-4",
"messages": [
$$$messages$$$
],
"temperature": 1,
"top_p": 1,
"n": 1,
"stream": false,
"max_tokens": 1000,
"presence_penalty": 0,
"frequency_penalty": 0
}
''';
message_template = '''
{
"role": $$$role$$$,
"content": $$$content$$$
}
''';
begin
  var slMessages := NewStringListH;
  for var t:= 0 to high(Fchats) do begin
  var msg := message_template;
  msg := StringReplace(msg,'$$$role$$$',VArtoJSONStorage(Fchats[t].role),  [rfReplaceAll]);
  msg := StringReplace(msg,'$$$content$$$',VArtoJSONStorage(Fchats[t].content),  [rfReplaceAll]);
  slMessages.o.Add(msg);
  end;
  result := overall_template;
  result := StringReplace(Result,'$$$temp$$$', floatprecision(Random(100)/100,2),  [rfReplaceAll]);
  result :=     StringReplace(Result,'$$$messages$$$',unparsestring(',',slMessages.o),[rfReplaceAll]);

Anyway… I made this… extracted the response in JSON format and posted the comments directly to the database… Let’s see how these various personalities react to taking the Red-Pill. Feel free to chime in and offer them therapy.