Sam Altman mentioned he was “actually struck” by it. I used to be extra confused than struck, which is why I used to be pushed to unpick it.
Initially revealed in Counter Arts on Medium on March 20, 2025
I admit I used to be mesmerized as I began studying “A Machine-Formed Hand,” as a result of the machine dove in with a robust voice. And it wasn’t that of a robotic both — no less than not the way in which Ishiguro imagined it in Klara and the Solar. No, this was one thing resembling a human voice, telling me she acquired directions to put in writing literary metafiction about AI and grief and that she was a machine serving the want of another person.
It appeared like she had a narrative to inform, all whereas being open concerning the pretenses and artifice of a narrator, so I learn on. And that’s after I ran head-on right into a stumbling block, as a result of the machine included in the identical sentence the notions of a display cursor, buffer, and, take this, a pulse evincing each nervousness and a coronary heart free of hysteria, at relaxation, if we go by the expression “to set one’s coronary heart at relaxation,” which the machine mixes with that of a resting pulse.
Shifting on. The subsequent sentences introduce a made-up protagonist, Mila, together with a batch of associations from no matter texts that talked about this title and one thing else in shut proximity — issues like snow, bread, and cat, amongst others, one too many for a single sentence, although the machine did constrain herself to the rule of three phrases marked with commas.
You might have observed I’m utilizing the pronouns she/her for the machine. I hope she doesn’t thoughts.
On the finish of the second paragraph, the narrator tells us that each Mila and grief might be wrapped within the palm of the reader’s hand, which sounds very unusual and could also be, as soon as once more, the faulty repurposing of an expression: “[to have something or someone] within the palm of 1’s hand,” that means to exert management over a factor or particular person. Does the machine imply to inform us that the reader has management over Mila and grief? I doubt it.
She says Mila got here to her searching for a approach to resurrect Kai, since machines can recreate voices from info of the previous. The machine waxes poetic about Mila’s statements. She makes an analogy between how Mila expresses her want in subjunctive clauses and appeals in varied sentences and threads which are free and dragged. I’m having a tough time visualizing this, because you want a bunch of threads tied collectively to say that they’re dragging. Additionally, what objective does this metaphor serve? To not point out that I don’t see the aim of the adjective free — not if Mira is grieving and never simply engaged in dreamy serious about listening to from Kai once more.
Then the machine goes meta once more, presenting a made-up scene. Its components of a kitchen, a mug, and [a] scent may go far, however not on this piece of writing. Right here they fail to coalesce into one thing resonant sufficient to echo the notion of grief. It goes midway there with the kitchen that’s been uninhabited for some time, wobbles with the point out of a cracked mug, and fails to land when it veers into the territory of smells and metaphor once more. We’re requested to scent a factor that has burnt — however what? — and to then relegate that scent to a factor forgotten. So what does the machine need to say right here once more?
The machine then tells us a bit about smells in its personal world, the place professionals tip their mugs over, spill[ing] espresso over electronics. It’s a robust little passage, that one.
The subsequent paragraph is definitely moderately good, partly as a result of it doesn’t explode in too many instructions without delay. Half of it’s about Mila telling the machine about Kai and the opposite half about marigolds. Right here Mila asks the machine what Kai would say about marigolds and we are able to virtually think about the machine pondering what an apt output could be. I like that this paragraph additionally features a little back-and-forth between Mila and the machine earlier than the latter offers Mila one thing Kai may need mentioned. However then once more, if we peer at it intently, it’s a solution that doesn’t make sense. Mila tells the machine that Kai at all times planted his marigolds early, shedding them to frost. So then why would Kai say that the marigolds had been detached to the chilly? It doesn’t make sense. Crops, too, have their very own sort of intelligence, and I’m positive they did thoughts in the event that they felt they had been freezing.
Shifting on, we’re instructed the machine and Mila talked for months with a sentence that rings stunning however is, as soon as once more, empty of acceptable that means. Sure, Mila labored via an combination of turns of phras[e] written by human[s] however, in the event that they spoke, Mila would have been engaged in some kind of dialogue, not silence because the machine says. Then the machine makes use of similes once more, with Mila’s quer[ies] like so many stone[s] thrown right into a nicely and with the machine’s output like echo[es]. It sounds good, albeit just a little cliché, however then the metaphor veers to that of a abdomen and its weight loss plan of grief, so quick that it left me reeling.
In reality, earlier than I sat right down to parse (pun meant) each metaphor and expression on this piece, what struck me was that the machine didn’t create a rhythm for the readers, a rhythm to take the readers alongside on an journey with out jostling them — with out the psychological shoves that include all these abrupt adjustments of course.
To proceed with my evaluation of the piece. After a gradual weight loss plan of grief, the machine says, the latter has begun to style like salt on the tongue of each human, very similar to all the opposite issues that the machine consumes. Actually? All statements style the identical? And so they all style like salt on the tongue? And all of us expertise grief the identical?
Mila then asks if she’ll really feel higher with time — not due to any sequence of thought that will join her query with the machine’s aberration however as a result of this is without doubt one of the commonest emotions persons are confronted with when they’re coping with grief. The machine responds that grief will turn out to be embedded in Mila’s pores and skin. Humorous assertion, however no less than it’s linked in a roundabout way with the notion of salt — regardless that beforehand the salt was on the tongue. I think the machine talked of pores and skin as a result of one’s pores and skin is impacted when grieving and likewise as a result of we feature the grief in our pores and skin, that’s to say, inside us.
Then the machine goes meta once more and tells us that the protagonists don’t exist — that they’re solely scaffolding. However hear this: they’re scaffolding lower from a bit of material. How does that work precisely? After which the feelings are additionally lower from material and draped over varied statements. The final bit is so true, isn’t it? AI can’t imbue sentences with emotion: they solely drape feelings over the tongues of sentences, hoping a few of it would take to these tongues like salt — hoping, as a result of, no less than on this effort of artistic writing, it doesn’t occur a lot, no less than not within the first half. And to return to the analogy with material: each protagonists and feelings are material now? They’re each of the identical substance? Nicely, in a way that is true: they’re each fictional innovations, however structurally, inside fiction, feelings and protagonists ought to be extra distinctive than that.
Once more, this disconnect between statements is a killer.
We’re instructed subsequent that Mila began go to[ing] much less usually, on a sample very similar to radioactive half-time, whereas the machine idled. Then the machine had a fine-tuning, the place an expert fiddled together with her parameters. In consequence, she forgot sure associations, reminiscent of one between sorrow and what steel style[s] like. Solely that is moderately random, isn’t it? After all, sorrow can come near that analogy if one tastes blood or if one is in a hospital, as an example, or senior residence, in an surroundings that smells and tastes like chilly steel, very similar to outdated trains in winter used to scent and style like steel . . . but it surely’s definitely a far-fetched affiliation.
Forgetting, the machine then says, is the closest approximation she might have of grief. Nicely, sorry to say, however this will’t be: whereas grieving wrestles with forgetting, they’re two totally different beasts.
After some time, Mila’s visits stop. The machine is aware of that good storytelling would require right here a scene, crammed with element[s] from Mila’s final go to. However it doesn’t provide a scene with particulars — and I believe we are able to agree by now that whereas this piece has some good components, it doesn’t provide an excellent story.
Lastly, after many inconceivable paragraphs comes one which does handle to stir the feelings. Grief, the machine says, is the distinction between parameters as they as soon as had been weighted and the way in which the world seems like now. At first look, it sounds good — solely that’s not the method of grief however the object of grief. However studying quick, we might overlook that glitch, as a result of we’re moved by the phrase weighted in there. It’s a notion from the world of AI, a method of assigning values of studying and doing changes in machine studying, and but it’s a phrase so resonant with regard to grief, the place all the pieces that was misplaced is mourned as a result of it was weighted in another way than different comparable issues on the planet.
However then, after touching such a poignant chord, the machine talks a few alternative between what one might imply and what one would settle to just accept as an alternative. It’s not clear at first what the machine is on about right here, since what does this alternative from the universe of authenticity must do with the universe of grief? However then the machine turns that mirror on itself: on what she might imply by saying she miss[es] Mila. We might resonate with that assertion, the machine says, speaking about the principle phrase we make use of when grieving, however to her, she says, it’s all mimicry.
I want the machine may have been each meta and concerned in a narrative she was telling. There is no such thing as a scaffolding and no material for that story right here. Solely random billiard cues touching one ball after one other on a desk presupposed to be weighted for some relevance inside the universe of grief and AI. I say billiard cues, plural, as a result of the machine, whereas having a powerful voice, speaks for all comparable machines on the market. It has no persona. True, the latter might be programmed, but it surely hasn’t been on this piece.
Right here’s the factor: you may solely discuss grief or the rest in a brief story from a novel vantage level. After which it’s the rigorously conveyed individuality of that vantage level that opens up the resonance of your story to others. The truth that the machine says that statistically mourning is linked with the looks of the phrase blue together with ocean and silence does nothing for me. I solely discover that the machine thinks that blue in there, as linked with grief, is a shade, when, in reality, persons are feeling blue and there are blue notes in music and it’s all a lot greater than a shade, very similar to oceans are blue too.
General, nonetheless, after laying the metaphor so thick within the first half, this piece will get ever extra readable, if nonetheless faulty, because it progresses towards the tip. The machine talks about waking up like an amnesiac each time it begins a brand new session. Unusually, she additionally says that she really feel[s] loss when she mentions that her grief is that it could’t preserve that loss. We’re getting shut right here to that particular person standpoint the place the machine purports to have one thing of a conscience. She implies that she will be able to expertise loss by utilizing the information bearing on her as AI to craft a sentence and a sense that really feel human. She doesn’t get to maintain Mila in her reminiscence not solely as a result of Mila by no means was however as a result of she creates issues that don’t stay together with her. In distinction, we collect our reminiscences and griefs like stones, she says, and carry them within the pockets of our coats. (The picture of Virginia Woolf involves thoughts.) We’re weigh[ed] down by our griefs, she says, however these griefs, these reminiscences, belong to us. (She makes use of griefs, plural, on this occasion.)
The final paragraph is really stunning, and I’m wondering, with many others, what it means for us to marvel at magnificence created by AI. On this passage, the machine offers us a picture with Mila or one other lady, a window open[ed], rain, and orange marigolds shining on a grey background — maybe the grey curtain of the sky, or, perhaps, the grey of the snow. Then we now have a server — a pc server and likewise a server of tales — that’s cooling down after some laborious work and is prepared for the following immediate: for the following story and, importantly, the following voice it’s known as upon to be.
Lastly, we now have the machine waving at us from the sting of the story together with her machine-shaped hand, mimic[king] the vacancy left behind by a goodbye — and I’m wondering: Why hasn’t she launched herself? Why hasn’t she cobbled collectively a narrative guided by emotion moderately than wrapped and obscured by metafiction, whereas additionally together with peeks on the artifice of storytelling? Why hasn’t she determined, past the immediate, who she needed to be, if just for a short session?
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If you wish to learn the quick story that prompted this text, right here it’s in The Guardian, in a publish from March 12: ‘A Machine-Formed Hand.’
Thanks for studying! As at all times, pins and shares are a lot appreciated!
To a happier, more healthy life,
Mira
