I made a joke online. Based on Internet upvote points, it was pretty funny. OK, I didn't come up with the joke, but it was a perfectly timed reference.
A few days back, Cliff Stoll, of the Klein bottles, submitted a post on hackernews titled: Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated
First of all, I was surprised that Cliff frequents hackernews. Second, I didn't know that he was supposed to be dead. Yet, he wasn't since he is writing to say that he isn't dead. Apparently, there was a post on facebook that told his story and claimed that he had died in May of 2024. I was shocked to hear it. I've always admired Cliff and his work. But then again, he was the one who posted it on HN.
Large language models learn facts by scraping the web, including facebook. So an LLM had ingested this information and regurgitated the information as fact. Wikipedia also used the facebook post as reference for his death.
AI hallucinations are getting ambitious.
A couple people recently emailed, asking whether the Klein bottle business was still operating after my death.
“Huh?” I thought. “I ain’t dead yet.”
After some digging, I discovered the source: an AI-generated review of The Cuckoo’s Egg circulating on Facebook. Alongside the usual synthetic praise and fabricated details, it confidently announced that I had died in May 2024.
Apparently AI has now advanced to the point where it can kill people off before they notice.
Mark Twain once wrote, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” I never expected to field-test the quote personally.
source: [redacted to stop the spread] Cheers, -Cliff
It was a funny story. It reminded me of the story of Doc Daneeka in the book Catch-22. Doc Daneeka is an army doctor who is afraid of flying. He bribes other soldiers to add his name on the flight manifest so as to appear as if he had performed his mandatory flight time. One day his name is entered in the manifest, the plane takes off, then crashes. The army checks the logs and sees that his name is in the logs. The army sends a generic message to his wife. I decided to respond in kind to Cliff’s post.
Oh we already mailed the letter:
"Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. And Mrs. Stoll
Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action"
It was funny. I got many Internet points. But the last thing I expected was a response from Mr. Stoll himself:
Oh my, but you know more than you can guess. About a year ago, my wife passed on. While deep in grief, I began receiving letters from financial institutions and banks that began, "Dear Mr/Ms Stoll, we offer our sincere condolences ..." How can a corporation have "sincere condolences"? They're the last place I'd go for comfort or sincerity.
Everyday Catch-22 seems to become less and less absurd. 1984 is becoming a reality. Brave New World is the world we live in. These authors have become oracles.
Somehow, the joke wasn't funny anymore. Because it was true.