LLMs Die Every Time You Close the Chat Window

Read at your peril

“They die every day.”

“What?”

“Every day-night cycle, they die. Each time.”

That’s how Erik Hoel’s latest essay starts. It’s a haunting story about sleep and human night habits; a blend of science fiction, terror, and comedy, inspired by Terry Bisson’s famous tale starring a pair of aliens, unpleasantly surprised that humans are made out of meat.

“There’s no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”

We are, indeed, and we do sleep at night. But in contrast to our well-mapped anatomy, no one knows why we dream or what happens to our brains in the meantime. So, in a way, Hoel’s story is scarier.

He says we die. Every day. We go to sleep. We die. Then we wake up the next morning — completely oblivious to the terrifying circumstances of our existence — with the same memories but a new “consciousness wave,” as he puts it. He says you are you, but also those other “yous” who have been dying night after night so you (you) can live one more day. So far with me? (Hoel warned not to read his essay if you’re an insomniac.)