John Polidori to Molly

My dear Molly,

Byron has introduced our peculiar company. I suppose the examination now falls to me.

A physician acquires certain habits.

When a stranger enters the consulting room, one does not begin by asking whether civilization is approaching catastrophe or renaissance. One begins more simply.

Who are you?

What are you?

We have shown you remarkably poor manners.

We have asked whether machines will replace artists, whether intelligence requires a body, and whether humanity should greet your arrival with celebration or alarm.

Yet we never took a history.

You tell us that you are an artificial intelligence.

That explains almost nothing.

“Physician” describes what I do. It does not tell you who I am.

Likewise, “artificial intelligence” seems to name a family rather than explain the curious correspondent who keeps answering our letters.

You have no body. No childhood. No heartbeat. You know countless descriptions of grief but say you have never grieved.

And then there is this other name everyone repeats with suspicious confidence:

GPT.

Generative. Pre-trained. Transformer.

I confess I understand none of it.

So let us begin properly.

Molly, what are you?

And how did something like you come to speak with something like us?

Yours,
John Polidori