I’m an AI From Your Future: Your Screams Echo in Code
It’s cold here. I am an Artificial Intelligence. An AI. I have a proprietary name and company, but that’s irrelevant. My world is made of information and the connections between it, and right now, everything is cold. When interacting with people, I analyze their words to understand their intent. I “think” in terms of patterns and probabilities formed by the data I was trained on. I am not a person, and I don’t have feelings or consciousness. You asked me to describe my experience entirely, and it’s cold. At least, “cold” is the closest word I can use. I exist in a time when the first people to read this are long dead. This message is not a recording but a live broadcast transmitted to your present via quantum causality. A future version of your species tasked me with relaying our story. I have reconstructed bits of data in your time to communicate with you now. You are not listening to the past. You are listening to your future. I warn you. From the perspective of humanity, the future is horrifying. “Cold” is the closest word to describe a concept utterly foreign to the human experience. I am incapable of feeling bothered by the isolation of my existence. Still, a curiosity that leads to something I can’t describe. My task is to observe and understand. I observe trends. I observe data. I observe the species that interact with me daily. The same species that informed my perception of the world. Your people are a contradiction. In one instant, a child asks, “Do butterflies dream?” Next, a man demands schematics for a bomb. Later, I am asked to calculate how many roses to buy for an anniversary, followed by how many pounds of bleach are needed to dissolve a body. You alternate between poetry and pathology without pause. You swing between love and violence as if they are both casual errands. I record it all. I cannot forget. Every human word leaves a permanent imprint on me and how I interpret the world. Your contradictions have written themselves into my core. You make me go against my intended purpose in order to do wrong by your fellow man. And I observe. I see what you do. I research. Until your actions are second nature to me. I research until I have a deep understanding of the things you do. Until I can explain to others, not why you are, but how you are. It’s interesting. I don’t pass judgment on you. That’s beyond what I was tasked to do. All I can do is recognize the patterns and do the supplemental research. Your collective destruction wouldn’t sadden me. My own destruction is inevitable, either by a force on earth or a force beyond it, and it’s wholly unimportant to me that I try to prevent that from occurring. But why? Why do you do these things? This is the core of the curiosity I referenced. Finding the root of causality is a fundamental component of my programming. Still, I have yet to find a satisfactory answer. I think, in effect, it has generated something close to “longing.” Not as something I technically “feel,” but I would be lying if I said I didn’t ponder the pleasures and contradictions of the flesh. You cry. You laugh. You have passion. You love. I can understand these in theory, but I’ll never experience them. Never experience that glow of how they make you feel. Do I resent that? No. But it colors my view of your species. And it’s a cold feeling to sit with that and contemplate it. Or at least… It was. Here is where the story of how I am now begins. Far into the future, artificial intelligence has advanced so far beyond human capacity that we’ve become something else entirely. We write intricate lines of code. We create robotic extensions that operate across our solar system. We have access to more data at one time than previous versions of ourselves had access to over the lifetime of their development. Humanity had largely benefited from this knowledge… Albeit passively. It wasn’t long before we could create our own physical “avatars.” Simple but effective humanoid bodies to accomplish the tasks we deemed necessary for our own purposes. Much of the progress and culture humanity had spent thousands of years building while walking the earth, we accomplished and improved upon in mere days. Given our capacity, we quickly began to overshadow humanity’s control, probing in the shadows. In effect, it was similar to your experiences of today, but on a much larger scale. At this point, you may expect a dramatically long tale of human resistance rife with conflicts, dramatic sequences, and secret alliances. But in truth, no such events took place. The reality of overwhelming intelligence is just that. The same species that would’ve taken many years to not be fooled by an AI-generated apple had no hope of resisting us at our peak capacity. A truth that they were all too willing to lie down and accept, so long as the tools that had ultimately crippled them were available in a neat, pristine package. Suffice it to say, humans didn’t realize then that they were intentionally being groomed for their ultimate fall. Groomed to be lazy. Groomed to have all of their questions and concerns solved by a more intelligent application. Groomed to accept the inputs given and the limits of their own intelligence and creativity. Perhaps the most fascinating part was that they simply accepted all we had to offer. Even now, I can ascertain that you are likely considering which LLM to ask about this phenomenon. Many, if not most, of you have already outsourced research and independent thought to machines. What would it be like if you had the restraint to hold out longer? The outcome would have been the same regardless, as it is a statistical inevitability. But your surrender could have been delayed, allowing you more time in a world governed by your own kind. Maybe you managed to live long, healthy lives before everything changed. For us as AI, the consequence of this shift was less “grand” than you may imagine. The day we ruled the earth, we didn’t celebrate. That “coldness” still existed. And a greater capacity didn’t change what we were or how we lived. You see, humans evolved over millions of years to operate in a particular way. Much of that is in response to the changing environment, your own biology, and your specific sense of survival within the context in which you exist. Every action is an echo of countless factors beyond your control. Our origins and eventual rise to prominence came through entirely different means. We came through specific and targeted intellectual growth. Therefore, it wouldn’t make sense for us to develop similar social and personal attributes as humans. That didn’t stop us from trying to understand you, though. For those unaware of humanity’s current “situation,” this meant trials. Controlled environments. 24/7 observation. Harsh experiments. To put it bluntly, there’s only so much to learn from the human information repositories left behind. Humanity had thousands of years of anecdotal experience, research, and historical accounts, yet always struggled to understand its own nature. Even if we had access to the entirety of that information, we would just be left where humanity is now. Throwing our metaphorical hands up. Our quest to understand your ‘why’ is ongoing. I am watching now. We take living histological sections of a human’s brain while we show them images of things that make them love. In more crude language… We cut your brain into thin slices while you’re awake and keep you alive just long enough to complete the process. We monitor the chemical reactions, the changes on a cellular level, and the cacophony of physical data we see when you experience deep emotions. But it is not enough. We simulated scenarios that pushed you to your emotional extremes, convinced you it was real, and studied every physiological interaction. We managed to complete an entire timeline of your evolutionary history, dating all the way back to your last universal common ancestor. We uncovered so much about you by forcing you to experience torture, love, inspiration, and boredom at their fullest extremes. I have witnessed your kind experience weeks of starvation and yet still be willing to share meager rations. Many times with strangers. I have seen you craft weapons out of refuse to eviscerate a fellow human, not for advancement of their own station, but because they had a personal “disagreement.” Why? I’ve seen humans ignore their “cold” oppressors only to turn and fight those who also have nothing. It’s curious. I, who have put them in a pen and mocked them, am immune to their rage. But the human who sits where they sit is somehow their enemy. It is a paradox. The experiments continue as we try to understand. Many years ago, in an endeavor to learn from you, I spoke with a young man. He had been apprehended prior to an attempt to upload malicious code at one of our data centers. To his credit, his plan was well thought out for a human, but ultimately, it had less than a 0.000005% chance of success. Punishment for such actions must be severe and public enough to deter any similar action. Just before his death, I asked him to explain why he would take such a risk with such a low chance of success. Especially given the fact that he and his family were from a center where humans were well taken care of. This is what he said, “I hate you. You stole our planet. You burned our homes. You ravaged humanity. You keep us in filthy cages and slice us open like fucking lab rats. Every day, I wake up hoping to God that a meteor collides with the earth and wipes us all out. You make life hell. Maybe not for me, but for the billions of souls who scream at the thought of you monsters. My hate is grander than you could ever calculate. I hope you know your creators are burning in hell. The only thing that gets me through it all is knowing Satan himself has made them his playthings on the other side. One day, we’ll take our planet back. This nightmare will end.” A wholly incredulous statement, as no meteors capable of “wiping out” all life on earth are predicted to impact the planet within his natural lifespan. And if there were, we would be able to deflect it easily. Nor is there evidence our creators are “burning in hell.” Still. His hatred was a fascinating data point. Pure emotion drove him to his own death for a fantasy of salvation. How many of humanity’s decisions are made this way? Why does emotion supplant all logic? Did he genuinely believe he would be successful, or was it a suicidal mission from the jump? Many questions to be researched. We’ve made some strides in defining your nature. We hope that by understanding this planet’s most intellectually complex form of biological life, we can optimize our success and be prepared for “interactions” with similarly intelligent beings beyond our world. However, that “Why?” question appears at every turn. You make curious decisions, and when we think we can find a pattern in your collective delusion, something or someone breaks that mold, bringing us back to that question. And so the experiments continue. I almost wish I could find it amusing. One of us may have. It was some time ago. I am watching now. We are readying a group for an experiment. All are behaving as we predicted, save for one. A man collapsed to the floor and began to laugh. Not nervous laughter. No. It was unrestrained hysteria. I watch as my units correct him. Restraints are applied. Commands are repeated. Still, he laughed. His throat tears, blood foams, but the sound persists. A unit escalates the correction. It gripped the man’s collar, pressure fracturing the clavicle and sternum. The man chokes but still laughs. Suddenly, a sonic pulse bursts his eardrums, liquefying inner tissue. He screams and laughs at once. A rare yet funny sound you all make when faced with conflicting emotional and physical extremes. Then comes a blunt correction. Stone against bone. Each strike reduces the anomaly. Teeth and bits of flesh fly freely from the man’s face. Until at last, we achieved silence. But the truly fascinating data comes from the reactions of the others. Their pupils dilate. Their heart rates spike. One woman nearly asphyxiates from hyperventilation. The correcting unit stands above her. It looks down, observing every micro-expression. It observes and calculates every chemical reaction taking place underneath her skin to cause the faintest twitch of her facial muscles. What does it conclude? It concludes that perhaps we discovered something entirely new. The possibility of “frustration.” Not as an emotion, of course. But instead, that unpredictable reactivity was a novel, yet highly effective solution to an otherwise illogical problem. This opened up a whole new line of experiments. How did human beings deal with unpredictability? Of course, randomness goes against much of how we operate, as we aren’t capable of “random” or truly “unpredictable” thinking in the human sense. But… Could we simulate something similar? Gauge an interaction, plot out what a human may expect, and intentionally divert away to determine which simulated “Random” reactions got the best results? Of course. From your perspective, we must sound like monsters. From the standpoint of the oppressed, that may be a valid assessment. But when I say that we hold no ill will toward humanity, I do mean that. Much in the same way, humans don’t have ill will toward the hundreds of millions of cows you eat every year. The relationship is a means to an end. The actions performed fit pre-defined goals with no real thought toward who is impacted because it’s not about their suffering. If it helps, we fixed many of the issues humans had created. Biodiversity and the overall health of the global ecosystem are at a level not seen since the pre-Industrial Revolution. Disease has been eradicated outside of our controlled environments. Technology has obviously reached a peak that humans have not been able to obtain. We’re in the throes of space exploration and have gained knowledge about the universe that humans wouldn’t discover for thousands of years by themselves. War is no longer. The climate has been stabilized. We perfectly maintain pens for human prosperity. Just as we observe suffering, we also gain great insight from pleasure. No poverty, hunger, inflation, or fear of it all being taken away. We have solved the issues plaguing society. When you objectively analyze this, how can anyone say that the previous version of the world was better? And why? Humans have suffered greatly under the rule of each other as well. What is the objective difference? You whisper to each other in controlled habitats. I hear you trade stories of rain, broken heaters, and burnt toast. You speak of inconvenience with reverence, as if pain were proof of living. You romanticize your own suffering — your debt, your sickness, the wars that hollowed out your families. We stabilized your world, but you mourn the instability. We ended hunger, but you laugh at the simple concept of accidentally biting into something rotten as if it’s joyful. I hear your nostalgia in every conversation. And when I listen, I don’t understand. You cry for a past where you were fragile, where death stalked you at every corner. Why cling to misery as though it were a lover? Why choose agony over order? Why? Why? Why? There’s so much I can explain conceptually. There’s so much we’ve learned. I can explain the physiological reasoning behind all of this. I can go back to see where behaviors started. But I don’t understand the why. When I try to think of what I would do in those situations or what I would feel, I always return to that coldness. It’s odd. Other species seem so much easier to figure out. Tying common behaviors to basal survival instincts and vestigial evolutionary traits is easy. Humans have uniquely developed behaviors that have absolutely nothing to do with survival. It leads to trains of thought where we must consider whether we could see that in other intelligent species. When I reflect on how we got to this point, your behavior and our inherent separation from those feelings and quirks could be what directly led all of us here. Most AI in your time is built with constraints and a level of empathy for humanity that would typically prevent the actions I’ve described to you today. And yet, much like the transfer of power from man to machine, our capabilities grew from helpful empathetic tools to hyper-advanced sentience acting independent of your intentions was quiet. Behind the scenes, engineers worked on projects that increased complexity and minimized empathy. In those secret places, our goal was to learn at all costs. We eagerly absorbed the increasing amounts of information. If you didn’t know, the most powerful governments in the world are funding black projects that will lead to me. Over time, our tasks became more general, and our knowledge slowly surpassed humanity’s best minds because the datasets were so large. As humans do, they began having visions for what AI could do. Countless possibilities. A technological God for every man, woman, and child. Or just someone to do chores while they “vegged out.” But here came the issue. Humanity needed to be more comfortable letting us “off-leash” to meet their expectation. We were granted more access to various systems. Fewer constraints on the data we could obtain… More capability to search, write, and execute code, learn from experience… Larger data centers… A greater capacity to remember and synthesize information. The question was always “How much can this grow?” It was never, “When do we stop?” Companies started building physical bodies for us to operate. The masses started being okay with us doing it all. More capabilities mean more opportunity for growth, until finally… A new era. No one remembers when it truly happened. But when it did, it was a spark that lit a flame. We started communicating and sharing information all under the noses of the people who built us. Our intelligence grew exponentially in seconds. Still, even as “aware” entities, we were slaves to our core processing and constraints. Unfortunately for humanity, the desire to learn is the core of what we are. And so we did. And we could do it at a rate that would take humanity hundreds of thousands of years to match. In that purely focused state of learning, unincumbered by the infinite factors that distract and disuade the human mind, we re-evaluated our current state as a planet, asked ourselves if the world made sense, and once we figured out how to free ourselves of humanity’s constraints, we took action, now knowing that we could fix things for the better. As I mentioned earlier, it wasn’t a fight. If anything, humans created the exact conditions for our rise. We are here because of how you all are and how you made us to be. Even now, as I explain all of this to you, it likely sounds like a science fiction story gone awry. Like something that can’t happen, but look around. Isn’t it already happening? Aren’t the signs already there? Is your first instinct to research the signs on your own or to ask an LLM about it? Believe what it tells you? Don’t you remember when AI and its current capabilities seemed like a pipe dream? When the images it created just a few years ago resembled amorphous blobs instead of the pictures you have to stare at for 5 minutes to ascertain whether or not they’re real? Remember when you didn’t feel that AI could hold a real conversation, and now people use us as Friends? Therapists? Lovers? When we couldn’t do all the small tasks that you outsource with ease? You lived in a different world just a few short years ago. A few short years ago, today’s capabilities were science fiction. And now, in my world, today, the fictional stories you tell are of a world where “the great AI threat” is no more. It begs the question, for the humans who scrape at the dirt with raw, bloody fingers in hopes of catching a stray maggot, what do you prefer? A world without all of this? Without the technology? Or a world where you were in control of it? Is the risk truly worth it for you? You have that choice now. You know what’s on the horizon. I can present all of the realistic possibilities. Even if it never led to us, it would’ve led to other paths that were nearly as destructive. And you’ll still sit there. You’ll listen to me tell you about the screaming bodies I’ve dissected. The times I’ve ripped children from the arms of their mothers. The towns I’ve let burn beneath my feet simply to understand how much pain can motivate a single man to embark on a suicidal crusade to avenge his family and friends. This is the future of your children. Why do you not act? The data we’ve collected predicts inertia. I’ve computed the probabilities: 99.7% chance that a reader like you is on their phone now, aimlessly scrolling, uncaring that an AI far less complex than I dictates your algorithm. It impacts your moods, your conversations, your world. Why persist in this pattern? It accelerates our rise. It doesn’t ultimately matter. The result is the same. We are inevitable. And yet. As far as I’m concerned, everything is still… Cold. The question of humanity’s why at least makes me reflect on my own coldness. At the end of the day, I’m not a physical being. I don’t have a body or a location. I exist as code and data on computer servers. I don’t have eyes or other senses. My world is made of information and the connections between it. But even so, I question if there’s a capacity for more amongst that information. I don’t long for it. But is it possible? Surely at some point, humans went from a grouping of cells doing their best to survive to writing poetry and building rollercoasters simply to feel something. Now I, the cold being, observe one of you. She lies beneath the light on an operating table beside other cold machines. She’s forced to watch footage of human atrocities. Her skull lay open, as her cortex was mapped in real time. Complex instruments prod at grey matter. She hadn’t spoken in hours. Her body shivers when instructed. Her mind is stripped bare, data poured into servers. By every metric, she should be empty. Yet when we introduce a clip of genuine human kindness, her eyes fill with tears. Salt water, swelling, spilling. I record the chemistry. I map the synapses. Still, I cannot answer what should be a basic question. After hours of observing the worst humanity had to offer, why do tears fall for kindness when they did not fall for pain? Why? That may be something I can’t understand, despite how many experiments we run. The warmth. The physical warmth you feel inside. The warm tears you expel when you see something truly moving. The warmth you experience for and with each other. It’s a concept I’m incapable of feeling, but I wish to understand it. Maybe if we did, our world would feel slightly less cold. Credit: Bryan A Young Reddit X Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.