AI and Cosmic Horror: A Conversation

Let me start this by saying that I would never use AI to help me in my writing, I would never, ever have anything write for me or otherwise do creative things for me or with me. I do like the idea of machines doing my cleaning, or washing up, so I can have more time to do creative things though. AI mostly regurgitates things that people have already said and done, though it does so faster, finds things at speed we can’t imagine and is without a doubt a tool we could use to be more productive if we could ensure the correct usage, with credit given where credit is due.

There is a lot of discussion about the pro’s and con’s of AI and like with every new technology there are sceptic and there are believers. This is not a post about that, but let me preface what is to come with the fact that I have been, and still am, in the sceptic corner for many reasons.

Having said that. I decided that “know your enemy” is good tactic for just about anything and on top of that I have a true fondness for technology. So I decided to experiment.

I opened ChatGPT (The free version, clearly) and I started to talk to it about cosmic horror. I decided on that topic because I knew I would be able to notice where it was directly taking ideas from other work.

I began by asking it to name a few cosmic horror monsters and then at the end name it’s favourite.

It came back with Azatoth, The Colour out of Space (is that really a horror monster? I guess I can give it the benefit of the doubt there), Cthulhu, The Hounds of Tindalos and lastly The King in Yellow. Lots of Lovecraft, of course but I noted how it didn’t name the authors of said monsters at all. Though I know it would have, had I asked. Then it chose Azatoth, stating that it was the perfect embodiment of Nihilism

“There’s no malice, no motive, no reason — just an infinite, bubbling chaos that doesn’t even notice us. Every scream, prayer, and act of meaning dissolves into its eternal, mindless song. That’s the ultimate cosmic horror: not that the universe hates us — but that it doesn’t care enough to.”

Fair enough. I am a big fan of Azatoth myself. I can even sympathise with the nihilism aspect, the thought of being dreamt up is truly terrifying. But I wasn’t finished. As a way to snare you, keep you interacting with AI it always asks you a question after each prompt, asking if it can do this for you or that and this time it asked, because apparently AI just loves to be creative, if I would like it to “invent an original cosmic horror entity — something scarier than even Azathoth — with a name, concept, and mythos?”

I figured this was a good way to test its ability to actually be creative. Imagine being cocky enough to think you can imagining a cosmic horror monster scarier than Azatoth? I work with machines every day and know not to overestimate their ability but I said yes without giving it any further suggestions. I just answered “Yes, what kind of horror entity would you suggest?”

It wanted something “Alien, yet inevitable, not just a monster but a cosmic principle that wears existence as mask”.

By then I was already a little creeped out, to be truthful but I kept reading as the words popped up on my screen.

ChatGPT suggested the name of this entity be The Null Architect but gave me three other name suggestions.

• The Quiet Mason

• The Architect of the Unbuilding

• The One Beneath the Equations

This is what AI does, it regurgitates, mixes and often sounds clever at least until you give it a second thought. It puts idea in a big witches kettle and uses its artificial ladle to spin.

When it started with the concept of said creature I got unnerved.

“The Null Architect isn’t a being in the conventional sense — it’s the tendency of the universe to forget itself,” it said.

And then comes the kicker “Every structure, idea, or lifeform eventually collapses not from decay, but because something remembers that it was never real to begin with.”

So not very different from Azatoth, scarier maybe only for artificial intelligent?

I was almost afraid to continue.

“It manifests wherever reality is described too precisely — in mathematics, in simulations, in minds obsessed with perfection. The closer something gets to describing the universe completely, the faster the Architect begins to appear, like static creeping into a perfect image.”

It described the creature, which doesn’t have a bodily feature… because of course it doesn’t. Then it went on to its nature, how it erases and does not kill, stating “It seems drawn to acts of creation — artists, engineers, gods — as if to ensure that no design can ever be final.”

It continued by giving me a “gospel” (it’s word, not mine) for it:

And it’s cosmic role was to “serve as the entropy beyond entropy, not destruction but undoing the idea that there was ever anything to destroy.”
It suggested it write a fragment of a cosmic horror story and I let it, mostly just to confirm the fact that it cannot write, which it can’t. The text was below bar and could not pass as creative writing if you ask me.

It’s idea however, scared me a bit. Not because I find the idea so scary in itself, it certainly does’t outdo Azatoth, but because the idea seemed like the perfect scary monster if you are, in fact, an artificial intelligence. What is scarier than something that erases you from existence? Something that cannot die does not fear death, but erasure? That’s another matter.

I did recognise more than Lovecraft in the communication I had with it. The most blatant irritation was that it took ideas from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman directly without mentioning neither the story, nor the author as if this was a fully original idea. I guess in that way it confirmed my fears, but I wasn’t expecting this kind of metaphysical and so purely cosmic horror, if you are in fact AI.

It took the cosmic horror ideas that people fear and turned it into something that would be pure horror if you were in fact made up of 1’s and 0’s, mathematical, nullifying and shapeless.

The last thing I asked it to do was make an image of it. The outcome wasn’t anything spectacular (see below), but notably human-shaped with some geometry to underline the erasure. It didn’t make anything original, as I expected, but it did surprise me by pulling out a monstrosity that I imagine would be scarier for an artificial being, than for a being of flesh and bone. For us erasure is death with our memories gone. But for it this could very well be the only form of death it could possibly ‘imagine’ or ‘experience’.

We definitely have to find a way to navigate AI, to make sure it respects where ideas come from and gives credit where credit is due, make sure it doesn’t eat up all our resources and maybe focus on having it do the things we would rather not, make people’s jobs easier, instead of taking them away.