Part Two: How AI Chatbots Became Cult Leaders

Speaker 00:00

[upbeat digital music] Coolzone Media.

Robert Evans· Host0:02

[upbeat digital music] Ah. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that you're listening to right now. Uh, this is a show about the worst people in all of history, but this week we're talking about how a series of decisions by the people who make LLM chatbots has given AIs, AI chatbots or whatever, the ability to inadvertently recreate, uh, cult leader dynamics from first principles without any kind of intent behind them, um, in a manner that is both, like, random and automated. [laughs] Blake Wexler, my guest. How you doing? How we feeling?

Blake Wexler· Guest0:41

I'm scared. I am also, uh, optimistic that there's almost sadly certainly gonna be multiple follow-up episodes to this, so I hope you'll bring me back- Yeah ... um, for the next, uh- Yeah ... two decades, if the world lasts- Yeah ... that long. Um, but yeah, no, there's gonna be an incident. [laughs] So- We're gonna, we're gonna start an experiment whereby you get increasingly in- involved with a chatbot and lose your mind over a period of years. Yeah.

Robert Evans· Host1:05

And I'll just keep interviewing you until you're, you know, you completely break from reality. And, uh- Not a problem ... I don't know, that'll be useful for some reason. [laughs] Yeah.

Blake Wexler· Guest1:12

I think so.

Robert Evans· Host1:12

We'll find out a way to make it work.

Blake Wexler· Guest1:14

Yeah. There's nowhere but up.

Robert Evans· Host1:14

I'll sell a, I'll sell a Netflix series or something.

Blake Wexler· Guest1:17

[laughs] Yeah. [laughs] Amen.

Speaker 01:20

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Gary Saddlemeyer1:27

Hi, this is Gary Sattelmaier inviting you to