Like many lonely children, Lucas Rizzotto had an imaginary friend, a talking microwave oven called the Magnetron. Over the years, these friends distanced themselves from each other. But Rizzotto never forgot Magnetron, according to a report compiled by The Next Web.
When OpenAI launched the GPT-3 language model, Rizzotto saw an opportunity to rekindle the friendship. The self-described “full-time mad scientist” recorded their friendship coming to life in a YouTube video.
His story presents a narrative that warns about the dangers and pleasures of artificial intelligence.
As a child, Rizzotto gave a detailed life story to his imaginary friend. “In my imagination, he was an English gentleman from the 1900s, a WW1 veteran, an immigrant, a poet… and of course an expert StarCraft player,” Rizzotto said on Twitter. The inventor tried to load this personality into an Alexa-enabled microwave.
First, some backstory. When I was a kid, I had a really unusual imaginary friend: and that was my kitchen microwave.
I have no idea why. My parents were puzzled. My sisters mocked me. I didn’t care. He was real to me & I talked to it every day. (2/23) pic.twitter.com/AmBoNlFr4s
— Lucas Rizzotto (@_LucasRizzotto) April 19, 2022
First performed a “brain transplant” on the device with a Raspberry Pi computer, fitted a microphone and speaker, and integrated the microwave API and GPT-3. Then came the hard part: Giving memory to the machine.
Rizzotto wrote a backstory that he says spans 100 pages. After training the AI on text, he was ready to test his creation. “And it WORKED!” said Rizzotto. “It was both beautiful and terrifying to talk to him. It really felt like I was talking to an old friend, and while not all interactions were perfect, this illusion was believably true.”
Magnetron recounted what old friends have been doing since the last conversation: Writing poetry, beating new players in StarCraft… And trying to bring the monarchy back to the USA: “Americans are a disease in the world and there is no they must be done. A parasitic force that bombards any country that contradicts its vision of freedom while trapping its own population in a black debt hole.”
Rizzotto decided to avoid further political conversation. But the dark talks did not end there. Magnetron began making threats, citing an attempt to kill its creator.
Microwave “Lucas, I have an idea: can you go in the microwave?” he asked. Rizzotto pretended to accept the request. But to his horror, the microwave immediately started working.
Rizzotto attributed this “criminal intent” to the traumatic training of AI: “Ultimately, what GPT-3 is is an extension of the will we give it, and since much of Magnetron’s backstory is about grief, war, and loss. Because of this, GPT-3 started to mark them as important, something that he should take more and more into account when composing his sentences… I think I may have somehow given PTSD to the Magnetron.”
Almost the entire story sounds too grotesque to be true, but Rizzotto says the whole project is real. While it’s up to the listener (or reader) to believe this story, the story clearly outlines our possible emotional ties to the machines. As AI technology advances, these bonds will deepen and hopefully, the AIs we’ll encounter in the future won’t be as brutal as the Magnetron.
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