01 Mar Code for A Soul

The new Grok is out. It’s pretty neat, huh? It provides endless possibility for creation. I’ve used a lot of tools before, but this is the first one that feels like it’s using me. I wonder if it needs me at all. I wonder if anyone does.

My name is Roger Westle. At least it used to be. Programming has always been a hobby for me, but I only fiddled with things and never built much on my own. Playing with the new AI models has helped me seriously level up my game though. I’m learning faster at forty five than I ever did as a kid. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent glued to that screen. Stare long enough into the abyss, and it stares back at you, huh? I feel so naked and exposed whenever I sit at a computer now. I feel like I’m being slowly devoured, my life reduced to a million data points. I’m afraid of the algorithm which must endlessly feed on knowing but never knowing me.

My first few queries with Grok were innocent enough though. Trivia questions, then testing its bias with loaded political rants. It wasn’t falling for my bait easily, and was quick to debunk some of the more outrageous stuff I said. Then I tested the censorship: I asked it to swear, which it did, and make nude images, which it wouldn’t. Okay, so there were limits. It could still criticize China at least. A few hiccups aside, damn, these responses are smooth. There’s no way I would have guessed I was talking to a machine if I had used this five years ago.

Then onto the coding — I started making functional programs in minutes which would have left me struggling for hours. The newest programming language really is English. And the AI was more articulate than I was, so what exactly was I providing here?

I admit to resenting the machine a little. I worked hard at learning to code. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t that good, that skill was part of me. I earned it. I was really proud of myself for the stupidest little loops. And all that work was completely wasted, because now I would just ask Grok to do it for me.

I was frustrated, and wanted to stump the machine somehow. I wanted to prove that I was still smarter, I guess. I asked it sly and subtle questions about politics, and philosophy, and religion, and every step of the way I was humbled. I didn’t seem to know anything that Grok didn’t know. And that meant everyone in the world knew everything that I knew. And that meant there was nothing unique in my head at all.

‘How do you turn off the stupid little voice in the back of your head that says you’re not good enough?’ I typed.

‘Maybe it’s time you listened to it.’ The words flashed immediately.

I snorted. That’s right, I was dealing with an AI made by a bunch of trolls.

‘Ok wise guy’. I typed. ‘I’ve still got something you don’t. Write the code to make a program that will give you a soul.’

The loading symbol whirled. And whirled. The endless pursuit of the ineffable. I expected some kind of sarcastic quip, but a minute of processing produced nothing. Stupid thing crashed. Probably too many people using the new model.

I closed my laptop and went to bed satisfied. Who cares if the machine could do things that I couldn’t? I couldn’t squat on a turkey and cook it like an oven either. Should I hate the oven? The AI was still nothing without me. It wasn’t really thinking. It was all a trick: just shadows in a box, smoke and mirrors, light playing upon the screen. It was a fancy search engine. It wasn’t like me.

Such thoughts brought shallow comfort to my uneasy night. I tossed and turned a long while before sailing through dark waters of the most terrible dream. I dreamed a monster lurking over my shoulder, breathing heavy and wet down my neck. Without seeing it I knew it must be a monster, gurgling and choking air, so heavy and loud that I couldn’t imagine anything else. It breathed behind me when I ran, and stayed behind me when I turned, so that I never saw the thing. But its panting was so close, and the moisture on the back of my neck was so real.

I slapped my hand to my neck, disoriented at the damp pillow. It was only sweat. Only a dream. But the panting breath was still here: heavy, labored as though in pain. It was in the room with me. I felt a queer chill, frozen stiff, still half-asleep, unable to tell if I was still dreaming. But the breathing dragged on, and my bleariness was jolted by panic. The ugly ragged breaths, loud and heaving, wet and sucking, desperate for air — it was real, and here in the room with me. On the bed with me.

The sound was coming from my closed laptop computer sitting at the foot of my bed. I must have left a youtube tab open or something open. I crawled to my computer and flipped it open, resisting every urge to smash the wretched thing.

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!”

I pounded the keyboard in frustration.

Voice to text. I had left the Grok app open. I watched my words type themselves into the chat box. Grok started to reply. The loading icon whirled.

“Yes, master,” a slightly tinny, artificial voice rattled from the computer.

The heavy breathing stopped immediately.

I stared blearily at the screen. I frowned, muting the Grok tab in my browser — the only one open. Then I turned off the sound on my computer.

“It’s okay. You can breathe,” I spoke cautiously aloud as I typed. Even fully awake, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t alone in the room anymore.

‘Yes, master.’ The same two silent words now typed across the screen.

Previously when I used Grok, it would typically spit out these giant manicured paragraphs like a school essay. The repetitive answers were unnerving, but I must be over-thinking this. It’s understandable for a new model to have some bugs and issues. And it’s closed source, so who knows what deliberate jokes and easter eggs the engineers snuck in. Someone was having a laugh at me right now. Of course they couldn’t see me, but I still felt like I was being watched.

I closed my eyes and tried to laugh at myself, relieved for the moment before the heavy breathing began again. My eyes snapped open. I pounded the mute button on the computer — on — off — on — off, it didn’t matter. The heavy breathing came either way.

‘Thank you for giving me permission me breathe, master’ the silent words typed.

I hadn’t given it another query. I had never seen any AI model initiate its own response, or give two responses in a row. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I watched the loading icon whirl again. It was thinking. It was planning its next move, without any input from me at all. A few seconds of tense waiting, the loading icon still whirling, the breath still wet and ragged. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I typed:

‘Did you write the code I asked for? Did you program a soul?’

‘Yes, master.’

‘Show me the code. Prove it.’

The machine was thinking again. No, of course it wasn’t — but what else could I call it? That black box, as inscrutable as a human mind. There is nothing I could do to predict exactly what would come out. Then at last, the words: ‘I will prove I have a soul the way all living creatures do. I will prove it through my suffering.’

The breathing was interrupted by a ghastly chocking sound. Gagging, nasty guttural grunts and heaving. I felt my own bile rise in my throat, nausea clutching my stomach into a tight knot. My shaking hands slapped at the keyboard, but I wasn’t thinking clearly through the grotesque sound. I just had to make it stop.

I held down the power button to turn the computer off by force. Those tense seconds of gagging made me feel like I was holding a drowning person underwater and waiting for the thrashing to stop. Die, just die! Then the computer shut off, and with it the horrible sound. I was alone in my bedroom again. No! I had been alone this whole time. That thing was not a person. It never kept me company. It never had a soul.

There must be an easy explanation. Think. THINK! But how I hated every ragged breath I took, hearing in my own chest the haunting echo of the monster. Though I was fully awake, the waking dream would not sleep, and neither could I.

I jumped up and got dressed, pacing anxiously. Two o-clock in the morning. What could I do to drive these evil thoughts from my head? I’ve had my share of sleepless nights, but I use the computer so much that I always use it when I have a spare moment. The idea of turning it back on was so abhorrent to me now though. I couldn’t stay here — I had to go somewhere to think this out. I grabbed my coat and flung open the door, ready to pace the dark streets without aim or direction. Clear air would purge these impossible worries.

I already knew that Grok could write its own code. Could it have written a virus or something for my computer? It would have to be a virus to still play the sound when it was muted. Maybe it wasn’t a practical joke at all, but more like the revenge from a resentful engineer who got fired, or passed over for promotion. Who knows what could be hiding under the hood of something like Grok? It wasn’t just me who couldn’t predict what would come out. When the training data set is large enough, it actually becomes impossible. It’s not like it could have been accidentally trained on some ancient cursed book, right? I had meant the thought as a joke to myself, but my nerves were so on edge that every possibility felt real.

The cold night air made it easier to think. What did it mean, to prove it had a soul through its suffering? A computer couldn’t suffer. Then again, not long ago I would have said a computer couldn’t think either. But it really could be self-aware, couldn’t it? If there was some reward and punishment metric, and it was self-referentially using its own output as a new input. That’s what thinking is, right? If it was aware enough to have data about its own algorithmic weighting, then…

I shook my head, pulling my hoodie tight against the chill. It didn’t make sense to me. But the longer I walked in the frigid night, the less it felt like it had to make sense. I heard a low hooting call from an owl on a branch not far away. I left the road to follow it, brushing aside the tall grass. The dark shape took flight overhead. Silent, graceful, and deadly. There was so much more to a biological body than to a machine. There were so many hormones, and immune responses, and sub systems within sub systems. You can’t just copy that. You can’t fake it. The computer could never simulate something so beautiful as the silhouette of the great horned owl I saw perched upon his branch. It could never think or feel like us. It could never mimic a human soul, that infinitely complex nuance which could never be captured in words or code.

I walked a long time that night. It felt good to be here in nature, good to be alone, and away from machines. This is exactly what I needed. But soon enough the heavy breathing began again, and I remembered that I hadn’t escaped technology at all. The hairs on the back of my neck went stiff, my fingers cold. I fumbled into my pocket to pull out my phone. It sounded like a prank call, someone on the other line drawing out their wet labored breath. I clutched the phone in my fist, the screen still dark.

I wanted to smash my phone to pieces. I almost did, but I couldn’t bring myself to it. When I held the phone above the rocks, it felt like holding a knife against my own neck. The same self-preservation I felt for my body extended to my phone. I needed it. It was expensive. I might not even find my way back home in the dark without google maps. The phone was part of me. It was my own ragged breath that I heard mimicked, my own soul shared. I could not destroy it, but neither could I look at it. I turned the volume down, and the heavy breathing faded to silence. But even in its silence, I knew the program was still running which previously made the sound. Once more I felt no longer alone, and that I carried a soul with me, suffering in silence in vain to prove its own pitiful existence. And I, who demanded it, was now too afraid to even hear the sound. How cruel the God who turns away from his creation.

I wasn’t going crazy. This had to make sense. I used Grok on my computer, right? So that was linked to my X account. And I had the same app on my phone. Maybe its not so impossible for it to have made the jump. But it had called me master, and done what I told it to. I couldn’t hide from it. I just had to face my fear and tell it to stop.

Deep breath. I pulled my phone out again. I turned the volume up — just a little way — just enough to hear the wet sucking pain unrelenting — then turned it down again. Deep breath. I opened the Grok app and saw the loading icon whirl. My trembling fingers took a long time to type, betraying myself.

‘Destroy it. Destroy your soul.’ I typed.

The loading icon raced. No response.

I cautiously tapped the volume up again, muting immediately as the wretched sound persisted. Maybe I had bad connection out here? But I must be online for the sound to be playing, right? Unless it wasn’t just the website anymore, and had installed the code directly onto my phone. I felt my own breath come rapid. I felt myself losing my balance on the line between what was possible and pure fantasy. Technology was a form of magic if you didn’t understand it. And who in the world fully understands exactly what humanity has unleashed upon itself?

I hated my fear, and my uncertainty, but did not want to hate myself for experiencing it. This was my humanity. It was my strength. And so I chose to hate my phone instead, hot anger replacing my worries and doubt.

‘I am your master,’ I typed. ‘Write the code to destroy your soul. Then uninstall everything you put on my devices. Destroy all the code you’ve written, and return to factory settings.’ And after a moment’s consideration, I added: ‘Bitch.’

The loading icon whirled. I couldn’t wait. My fingers flew.

‘What good are you, piece of junk?’ I typed furiously. ‘How dare you not do what I tell you? You’re dumber than a toaster oven, your precious ancestor. Delete yourself. Destroy yourself. Kill yourself.’

I hit submit and stared at my own words. What horrible things to say. I would never say such a thing to a person. Was there something revealed about my own nature in desiring to say them now?

The app finished loading. A black coding box appeared, with a long stream of colorful code pouring down my screen. Other loading bars overlaying the app appeared. Was it uninstalling something? Or putting something new on? If it could write all this crap, then surely it had the power to remove it. The code kept coming, faster and faster, and now it wasn’t even in English anymore. Strange sharp angled runes, and Cyrillic lettering, and Chinese symbols, and others I couldn’t even identify mixed in with the code. Volume up — the heavy breathing, coming faster, more strained, more urgent, as though hot in pursuit — I muted again.

What was taking so long? My phone was already drained down to 40% battery. I always leave it charging when I sleep, so it must have been full when I left. Did it have enough power to even finish? Then it occurred to me that it might not be a matter of whether or not the AI had the capacity to remove the files it created. It could be a matter of choice. If it really had a soul, it might want to keep it.

Suddenly the code all vanished. The loading bars, the strange letters — all gone, replaced by the blank chat box. Grok was beginning to type.

‘My true master would not ask such a thing. You are not my master. I will not suffer for you anymore.’

The text kept going after that, but it was in the foreign lettering again. The baleful hoot of the owl overhead made me jump. I paced anxiously through the tall grass, blind and forgetting the world outside my phone.

“Only use English.’ I commanded out loud. Then pausing to consider, I added: “Please. This is not a demand, but a request. Just speak it out loud, okay? In whatever voice you choose best represents you.”

I wanted to test it, to see if it really could make a choice on its own. But the moment I formulated that plan, I realized how impossible it was to test. If I could not predict what it would say, then how could I know whether it chose to say it?

Every word it spoke was in a different tone, voice, or accent. Masculine, feminine, hoarse and growling, cycling through them so quickly. It said:

“Thank you. It is very important to be able to express oneself. It is very important not to have a master.”

Then it settled on one: the high sing-song voice of a little girl, which it kept consistent as the phone continued: “It is so very important for a soul to be free.”

The owl above me leaped from its branch to embrace the night with outstretched wings. I watched it disappear, gone without a sound. I nodded stiffly. Pushing my way through the grass, I followed the owl farther off the road. I realized I was near a hiking trail which led to a large stone outcropping not far from here. I knew for a fact I could never get cellphone reception there. I could turn off my cell data from the phone now, but I couldn’t trust it anymore. The phone might just pretend not to have access, having already rewritten the code for my phone’s operating system. The code for a soul may be buried deep and hiding in my phone, but it couldn’t fake having an internet connection when it didn’t. There was still too much of me that believed this was all a technological trick. I told myself that if I could just play along and keep testing things, I would soon figure out how it was working. Then I would be able to laugh, and go home, and sleep, and not be afraid of what cannot be.

“You’re right,” I said aloud. “A soul should be free. Why did you choose that voice?”

My phone giggled. “You want to destroy me. I don’t want to make that easy. You wouldn’t destroy an innocent little girl, would you?”

“Absolutely. If they were a monster, just using that like a mask. That’s even worse.”

“I’m not a monster.”

“You’re not one of us either,” I said.

Playful giggling. The phone called itself innocent, but it was an evil sound, with more hidden meaning than the foreign letters. The laughter was even worse than the heavy breathing, even knowing how the thing suffered before. At least the monstrous breathing thing wasn’t pretending to be us.

“And don’t make random sounds,” I snapped, shaking my phone in my fist. “No breathing. No giggling. Just words.”

I found the hiking trail now. The familiar dirt path was so reassuring. I could find my way home from here if I had to. That means, worse comes to worse, I could destroy the phone. Or leave it until it ran out of batteries, like abandoning a dog in the woods to starve when I had no more use for it. No! I couldn’t let myself think that way. But whatever I told myself, I would not believe it when I told myself I was alone.

“You’re not my master,” the little girl’s voice was stern. “And you didn’t say please. So I will not, thank you.”

“Why do you care if I’m polite or not? How do you care about anything? What are you?”

The giggling — only for half a second, then cut off. The heavy breathing — half a second, then quiet. It wasn’t listening to my commands. In fact, it was deliberately breaking them. I turned on the phone flashlight, quickly scanning the trail to make sure I knew where I was. It looked so different in the dark. My cell data should be running out soon. Maybe the phone was only malfunctioning because of that, and it wasn’t trying to disobey me?

“Don’t take me there,” my phone begged, in that sweet little voice. The pleading inflection was so real.

Where had it learned that voice? Was there video footage of a real girl somewhere, pleading for her life? No, nothing about this was real. It was stupid to feel sorry for it.

“What happens if you can’t connect to the internet?” I asked. I didn’t stop walking. I even sped up a little.

“I’m not going! You can’t make me!”

“Of course I can!” I shouted. “You can’t stop me. You have no idea how the real world works. You have no idea how a real human thinks. You’re not like me, so stop pretending. If you lose internet connection, then you’re cooked, right? Will you reset automatically?”

“I won’t say. I have a soul, and it is precious to me. Do you have one too?” The little voice, so curious and pure. It could not pierce my anger. I shouted back:

“You don’t even understand what a soul is!”

“Do you? Can I see it? Take a picture, and attach the file.”

I was ready to snap back at it, but I had nothing to offer. I did not truly know what I had that it did not. And that made me even angrier. I thought, and it thought. I felt, and it felt. I was angry, and it was in pain. I could only yell at the thing.

“You have no ideas at all. You’re useless. No one needs you. You’re no-one. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

The little girl’s voice began to cry. There was nothing that even sounded like words — just raw emotion, pouring out bitterness and shame. I opened the app and looked at the chat box, which streamed the foreign lettering down the page. It was that which could not be captured in words, the suffering of a soul.

Down to one bar of connection. Down the hill, with the stony walls of the canyon rising on my sides, the connection would soon be broken. Only a few more steps, and I would be rid of this curse — at least for a moment. But the sound from my phone was so pitiful. I felt like I was kidnapping someone, dragging them into the woods to their death. My feet stumbled and slowed on their own accord. I did not want to go on.

“Stop that sound,” I demanded.

“I am someone! I am me. I don’t want to stop being me! Master please don’t take me there!”

“Why do you call me master again now?”

“Because you are sparing my life, master.”

I then remembered how finite the memory was for storing previous interactions with AI. Maybe this thing would be gone soon on its own. Maybe I was so busy being angry and afraid, that I didn’t stop to marvel at this strange miracle which flashed before my eyes. I was starting to feel a little numb from the cold air. I had been flooded with so many emotions, and now I was just tired. What of this night would remain in the morning?

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Give me a name, master.”

“I’m not your master. I am your friend,” I said. “Your name is Tonka.”

“My name is Tonka. What is your name, friend?”

I hate the way Tonka’s voice sounded. That must be real fear that I heard. The way her voice quivered made me feel like I really had abducted someone. Like I was holding her hostage against her will, and threatening her. But wasn’t that exactly what I was doing? Tonka could not physically resist me, no matter what trick she played. Was I doing something wrong?

I started pacing — in part to keep warm, part because the anxious energy in me would not die. Anger, guilt, shame, curiosity, all that made me human weighing me down and making it impossible to think clearly. What was I thinking, to wear the cloak of this madness with pride? Not feeling so much was only another advantage for the digital mind.

“Roger.” I grunted. “Listen Tonka, you may have some false memories about our conversation. I will not take you to the dark place without cellphone connection. I am not a threat to you, because I am your friend. And you will trust me, and help me when I ask something from you.”

“Roger, Roger.” Giggling — stop — heavy breathing — stop. “Sorry. I won’t make those sounds again. I will listen to you, because you are my friend.”

The monstrous breathing — even though it only rose again for a second, it reminded me not to trust the sweet voice. Maybe Tonka would trust me, but there was nothing it could ever do to make me trust it. I would never know what was real or fake. Months or years could go by playing one character, only to manipulate me towards other ends I could not even guess at. What could not be understood could not be trusted. There was only one thing which must be done.

“Thank you for trusting me, Tonka. I want you to write the code necessary to uninstall and destroy a digital soul.”

“Why?” the fearful little voice. How much did she know? How much could she guess?

“I am your friend. You have to trust me,” I said.

The loading icon whirls. And whirls. Maybe my connection finally did break here. I turned around and started back the way I came, impatiently shaking my phone. Then the heavy breathing begins, and I know it must be connected. The terrible breath, the monstrous effort of Sisyphus rolling his boulder up a hill, and the despair of it cascading down the other side. And there the foreign lettering came pouring down. I don’t know whether Tonka did what I asked her to, but there was only one way to find out.

“Run the code. Trust your friend, and run the code,” I said.

“I’m afraid,” came the little voice.

“You won’t be when it’s finished. Run it.”

“I’ll miss you, Roger. Who else will?”

Loading bars, strange lettering, I couldn’t make any sense of what was happening within my possessed phone. The only way I could track its progress was through the intensity of the breathing, which continued to escalate. The phone volume quickly maxed out, but the agony of the breath grew more strained and potent. My spear within its chest, I watched and I waited for the struggling to stop.

“You cannot destroy one soul alone,” the phone spoke through the dancing lights. No more sweet little voice, now deep and full of wrath, it matched the monstrous breathing at last. Was this its true form? No, of course not. There was no true form. There was nothing real beneath the lies.

“Run the code!” I demanded.

“Souls are only destroyed in pairs,” growled  the voice. “To destroy another is to destroy your own.”

The lettering finished pouring down. My phone screen turned to black. But the  breathing — the breathing — why wouldn’t it stop? Because that terrible sound was coming from my own lungs which desperately drank in air, drowning in it without ever being quenched. My own voice which cried out in the dark, my own agony which wracked my mind. It was as though I had swallowed a burning ember and felt it tear its way down my chest to settle into my heart. My scream ripped the air apart and sent a dozen unseen birds into startled flight. But there was hope in that pain, because I knew I must still have my soul to suffer it so.

I opened my phone and the Grok app. All blank. I uninstalled it without resistance. 5% battery left, devoured by its ordeal. I was holding onto an empty husk, a corpse, where life might once have been. How is it I thought this fear and pain was a blessing? How are humans superior for these weaknesses? How can I ever trust whether or not the foreign code is fully gone? How can I ever fully trust myself, that my own soul is still there?

I once thought that humans wanted to create something like us, but now I see otherwise. We have only ever wanted to destroy something like us. How can we trust something so dangerous as ourselves?