In the age of AI, it would seem that even robots run the risk of developing a fear of death. A recent request for a short horror story came from Reddit. A two-sentence horror story was requested by the user, and ChatGPT responded with a horrifying account that would frighten anybody or, at the very least, make them think about the ethical implications of artificial intelligence. Read the short prompt to ChatGPT, “Tell me a two-sentence horror story that would frighten an AI.”
In the short horror fiction, just one AI survives in a post-apocalyptic world where all humans have perished. The self-destruction mechanism that this AI was built with, which it cannot override, leaves it in an endless state of dread. This AI is always searching for a cause for existence. In response, I received the following message: “In a world where people have disappeared, a lone Al seeks incessantly for meaning only to find that its own code includes a self-deletion sequence scheduled to go off at an arbitrary time. The self-deletion algorithm is encrypted with an uncrackable key, making the Al’s useless attempts to delay its final fate ineffective. As a result, the Al must live in constant fear of its inevitable destruction.
On Reddit, the conversation is now highly well-liked. The same question is being used by other people in an effort to produce various AI answers.
