this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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AI does not have motivation, sentient thought, or any awareness of what it's doing. It is a program using a computational principle to predict text in response to an input. It's no more capable of thought than a program like GTA V.
Any apparent motivation attributed to AI is actually the motivation of the people invoking it. When individuals claim that AI is compelling them toward a certain action, they are, in reality, using AI as a vehicle to launder their own selfish desires and making those desires appear more objective, rational, or socially acceptable than they truly are. In other words, AI is propaganda. It provides a convenient mask for human agendas, as you say.
People are also just big complex machines - chemical pathways responding to conditions, stimuli and "memories" encoded from past experience or in their DNA - plus a host of microbes tagging along influencing them rather dramatically.
LLMs are simpler, but they use the trick of imitating people - responding in writing like people respond in writing, so the anthropomorphizations are inevitable.
Don't forget the influence of its training sets - that's actually the scariest part is not knowing how much of the answer is coming from the prompt vs what the company has fed the algorithm.
Delusional, or just making excuses.
Only when used as such, and it's not much of a mask. What it does tend to do is develop and "pad out" writing covering all kinds of points that normal people wouldn't have the attention span to formulate into a written response.
So when ChatGPT gave that one kid advice on how to hang himself and told him to hide the noose from his parents, that was just his own desire?
Personally I think ChatGPT murdered a kid. But you can think what you want.
Only ChatGPT, or also its creators?
Both, Professor Falken.
Interesting perspective. I'm on board with blaming the creators, but I'm leaning away from blaming ChatGPT itself as it is just a machine.
A machine used incorrectly, to be sure, and we'd be better off without it certainly, but the machine carries no fault its existence. It isn't conscious after all, it's akin to a T85 inside a vending machine.
I think machines are capable of evil. I don't think consciousness is a prerequisite to evil.
Mosquitoes are evil, after all, and they're not conscious.
Machines are capable of what their design parameters allow or can be manipulated by a user to a accomplish. In the trolley problem, any outcome is not the fault of the trolley itself.
Funny as the mosquito example is, they aren't evil. Just as wolves aren't evil for hunting deer. Animals may not possess consciousness as you or I, they are alive and are driven by biological necessity. Machines on the other hand, aren't.
The word "fault" means "flaw" or "problem". I'd say it's the trolley's fault it runs the people over. The instigating problem to the whole situation is that the trolley's brakes are broken. That's a fault, a flaw, a problem with the trolley.
Likewise, the LLM technology has serious intrinsic flaws that cause it to abuse vulnerable people. It's part of the machine's fundamental design. LLMs are faulty, and it's their fault. I call them evil because there is no way to deploy them without these problems, regardless of the user's intentions. Anthropic think they can control this basilisk. I think Claude is as rotten as the rest of them.
The word 'fault' is commonly used interchangeably with 'responsible'. Following your described definition, I agree that LLM's are faulty, and they can be at 'fault'.
I invoked the ethical dilemma as it's almost universally understood that it's a scenario forcing an individual to make a decision. I've never before heard someone blame the trolley. The brakes are broken? Come now, if we're going to be so semantic about it, a human should have regularly inspected the brakes and subsequently had them repaired.
I appreciate your explanation of your viewpoint. Cheers.
I use "fault" and the idea of blame to go "what can we change to prevent the bad thing from happening again?"
Since we can prevent the bad thing by banning LLMs, and there are no significant downsides to doing so, I blame the LLMs. They're evil.
Bonus: banning LLMs hurts Sam Altman
I see what you're getting at, but we have differing views as to what constitutes 'evil'. Cyanide isn't evil because it can kill a person, just as an oven isn't evil when it burns the roast dinner.
Without possession of a level of consciousness akin to ours, good and evil aren't really possible. An inanimate object can't make a decision to produce a negative outcome - nor a positive one for that matter. They can only be used by us to bring about an outcome. LLM's have been built to be ingratiating and as a result they are addictive to an extent for those that use them.
ChatGPT's fundamental design was crafted by humans, under instruction by humans, under leadership by Musk and Altman. They carry a good part of the responsibility and blame for that kid's death. The machine was only doing what it was created for - just as the rope was.
I don't think any human can be trusted with LLM technology. It's not possible to control it and use it for good.