[Ads-l] Meme in AI: Shoggoth with a smiley-face mask

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

This influential meme was created by @TetraspaceWest and initially
propagated via twitter in December 2022. I do not think it has been
mentioned on the ADS list before.

My interpretation of the meme: AI systems are incomprehensible
creatures which are indifferent to the desires and needs of humanity.
AI researchers are able to place a smiley-face mask onto these
unfathomable creatures. The mask allows the creature to pretend to
care about humans, but the mask is only a superficial alteration.

XTwitter Handle: Tetra @TetraspaceWest
Timestamp: 6:23 PM - Dec 30, 2022
https://x.com/TetraspaceWest/status/1608966939929636864

The tweet image depicts two shoggoths. These fantasy creatures were
defined by H. P. Lovecraft.

One shoggoth is labelled GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3).
The other shoggoth has a small smiley-face mask. It is labeled GPT-3 +
RLHF (Reinforcement learning from human feedback).

Shoggoths were mentioned in Lovecraft's sonnet cycle "Fungi from
Yuggoth". Shoggoths were described in the short story "At the
Mountains of Madness".

https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/poetry/p289.aspx
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.aspx

Here are links to 2023 website articles about the meme from the New
York Times and CNBC.

Article: Why an Octopus-like Creature Has Come to Symbolize the State of A.I.
Author: Kevin Roose
Date: Published May 30, 2023; Updated June 9, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/technology/shoggoth-meme-ai.html


CNBC Article: The world’s top H.P. Lovecraft expert weighs in on a
monstrous viral meme in the A.I. world
Author: Mike Calia
Timestamp: Jun 12 2023 3:42 PM EDT
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/12/lovecraft-joshi-shoggoth-ai-meme.html

[Begin NYT excerpt]
Shoggoths are fictional creatures, introduced by the science fiction
author H.P. Lovecraft in his 1936 novella “At the Mountains of
Madness.” In Lovecraft’s telling, Shoggoths were massive, bloblike
monsters made out of iridescent black goo, covered in tentacles and
eyes.

Shoggoths landed in the A.I. world in December, a month after
ChatGPT’s release, when a Twitter user, @TetraspaceWest, replied to a
tweet about GPT-3 (an OpenAI language model that was ChatGPT’s
predecessor) with an image of two hand-drawn Shoggoths — the first
labeled “GPT-3” and the second labeled “GPT-3 + RLHF.” The second
Shoggoth had, perched on one of its tentacles, a smiley-face mask.
[End NYT excerpt]

[Begin NYT excerpt]
@TetraspaceWest, the meme’s creator, told me in a Twitter message that
the Shoggoth “represents something that thinks in a way that humans
don’t understand and that’s totally different from the way that humans
think.”

Comparing an A.I. language model to a Shoggoth, @TetraspaceWest said,
wasn’t necessarily implying that it was evil or sentient, just that
its true nature might be unknowable.
[End NYT excerpt]

Garson

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