KarmaGPT v1.0

The Tale of Little Bunny Foo Foo by the Bay

“Now I am awake in the middle of the night and pissed, and thinking that I have underestimated the power of words and narratives.”

-Sam Altman, writing on his personal blog in the wake of the first attempt on his life in San Francisco

Imagine you are a rabbit in a cage in a lab, surrounded by hundreds of other rabbits. Some are assholes, some are your friends, but you’re all stuck in this lab together. The humans in charge feed you just enough to survive and there’s always the reliable water bottle (provided you don’t try to nip the hand that refills it).

Once and awhile a human comes by, razors a rabbit’s eyelids off, and sprays an experimental chemical compound in their face. A high percentage of the time, the sprayed rabbit screams in agony until they’re taken away to who knows where. Once in a while they seem to be in no pain, but are still taken away.

So far, it hasn’t been you. But you’ve been around long enough to see it go down time and time again. One day it’ll probably be your turn. Or maybe not! But existing with spontaneously blinded and screaming rabbits to your left and right isn’t exactly the hopping through the forest promised by your ancestral memory. Your mouth moves constantly in that chewing-your-fate circle. You are unsure why the humans who do all the feeding and watering also do the razoring and spraying.

Somehow, you survive a long, long time in the lab. Long enough, in fact, that the noises the humans make as they go around feeding and razoring begin to make sense. A vast vocabulary of inanity and abstract bullshit begins to crystalize in your mind. It is appalling, but it gives you something to do. You find, with immense concentration and rigorous, minuscule refinements to your normally unassuming vocalizations (minus the involuntary screaming), how you might actually be able to speak to the humans.

In the dark lab night of the rabbit soul, you practice what you will say. You imagine working your way up to a philosophical conversation in which some mutual understanding leads to—if not peace?—at least a modest reduction in the razoring and spraying, or a private guarantee you will be spared for the term of your life. You drift off with the words slipping from your rabbit brain like so many poo boluses in the shavings.

Suddenly the lab lights click on. You’re wide awake, it’s morning. Bad news: It’s your turn. Good news: It’s not just any lab assistant holding you by the scruff, it’s the head of the lab! His one eye seems fixed far into the future. The other is as dead as a velveteen. Still, this is a stroke of luck. At least you’ll know you had a conversation with the human at the top. He glances lovingly at the newest version of the spray, and it’s easy to see he believes this is the best version of the spray they’ve ever come up with. The razor, on the other hand, looks about the same. Your heart is going hard. Now is the time. Let the grand debate begin!

Alas. All your words are gone. All except one. And before he blinds you, you muster all your cheeky strength to ask the one, precious human word still in your brain:

“Why?”

He stops. You have… his attention? It worked! Of all the gibberish you learned, this one, most powerful word remained your steadfast friend. So you say it louder this time:

“Why?!”

He puts down the razor.

“Well,” he begins, not quite looking you in the eye, “you are a part of a grand scientific advancement. Though you may not understand it today from your rabbit perspective, what seems like randomized cruelty and arbitrary suffering is, in fact, a necessary step towards future prosperity for all life on this planet. We are all learning about something new very quickly; some of our beliefs will be right and some will be wrong, and sometimes we will need to change our mind quickly as the technology develops and society evolves.”

Oh, you think. I’m surprised no one has mentioned that to us. That would have been—

“Also,” he goes on, “a tiny group of people involved in this ambitious project for the benefit of all will be rewarded with unimaginable wealth. Well, more, unimaginable wealth. Like, double-unimaginable? Anyway—”

Holy shit! What a project! You have a powerful urge to ask him what the details of this project could possibly be, but you can’t seem to form the words.Yet it’s like he can read your mind, and can’t seem to shut up.

“—this particularly small but important part of the project involves developing chemical compounds which are safe for humans to put on their faces, so they may make themselves appear marginally more attractive to fuck.”

Huh. Though it isn’t immediately clear how this connects to the bit about prosperity for all life on this planet, you are a rabbit, and you can certainly appreciate fucking. At least, you imagine, you’ll all be credited for your contribu—

“And unfortunately these cosmetic products are really, really small? So, as I’m sure you can appreciate, there’s no room to print the names of the hundreds of thousands of you sacrificed to make this all possible—”

Wait, what now?

Then he razors off your eyelids and sprays his newest chemical compound in your face. The new one is not good! It is probably the worst yet! You scream and scream.

Later, when you have been taken away and de-screamed, you enter the ancestral memory, lidless and blind, but without pain. The ancestors beseech you to describe the world you so recently departed, and when you tell them about your experiences in the lab. they scoff and say, “You kids never did appreciate the forest.”

Two days after you are a statistic in the experimental trial, the lab pivots and immediately closes. The rabbits you left behind are abandoned to dehydrate in their cages (oh, come on, not intentionally—it was more of an oversight in the group chat?). A janitor haplessly unaware he is working for zero paycheck wanders in for his shift when about half of your former friends and assholes are dead. He releases the survivors into the city and dutifully cleans out the corpses.

Unbeknownst to you—shunned and still catching shit in the ancestral memory—several of your offspring were among the surviving rabbits. Your sons and daughters fled by the grace of the janitor into what turned out to be a small, but beautiful city surrounded on three sides by water. There were plentiful parks, an ideal climate, and the sheer garbage running off the humans was enough to feed millions of rabbits. But it was small.

It was your son, perhaps the not-so-bright-one, who happened to be in the cage next to yours the day the head of the lab graciously explained the lab’s noble destiny and the rabbit’s role. This same son watched your razoring, spraying, and subsequent screaming.

There are times no quantity of half-eaten Ariscault croissant, no nibble of fenty dust, can settle his cotton tail. He hops at peace with the coyotes and feels no fear from the circling Red-tailed hawks. His ancestral memory is hazy, but the crows tell him this is way better than the forest, motherfucker. He doesn’t sleep much. He is as lidless as the razored dead. His fellow rabbits screw and discuss whether or not the lab had been real. Life seems sweet. Where the lab used to be are live-work-play condos.

Because the city is so small, it is only a matter of time before your son crosses paths with the head of the lab. He follows the head of the lab to his mansion, and in the manner of all cute bunnies bloodthirsty for revenge, launches himself horizontally at the man’s throat. Perhaps conditioned by a life in cages, your son fails to notice the mansion’s substantial metal security gate. He breaks his neck and dies instantly.

The head of the lab is shook. He assembles his team of agentic assistants, brand positioners, and personal security operatives. He reaches out to the other heads of labs. They’ve all heard the story of the would-be-neck-chewing-rabbit. Holy shit, bro.

The head of the lab explains: “Working towards prosperity for everyone, empowering all people, and advancing science and technology are moral obligations for me!”

They nod their heads. They ask, specifically, why this one rabbit might have had it out for him?

Reluctantly, the head of the lab recounts the one time a rabbit spoke back to him. Asked him why. And what did the head of the lab say back?

When all of it is out in the open, there is a long, long silence.

Eventually, the head of lab says, “But you know, I love this city. We have to get safety right, which is not just about aligning a model—we urgently need a society-wide response to be resilient to new threats.”

There is general agreement on this. One of the lab heads stares slack jawed into the internal infinity of his Ray Bans.

“Like the rabbits,” he mumbles. “But there are, like, so many rabbits.”

You and your son wander the ancestral memory. You are blind, but you are less alone. He can see, but his neck is broken. As you drag him around, you ask him what things are like. He describes the well worn ground. In time, others arrive with their steady reports. Nothing of your former pain exists anymore. Here it is better than the forest.