1. This series of ASCII artworks was created via a conversation with an LLM in 2023. Experimenting with ChatGPT 3.5 as an author of ASCII art proved strange, as its creations were often far afield from what it was asked to make. It seems to have a partial idea of the dimensional space of ASCII as a picture plane, but a grasp of certain symbolic ends that can be created with ASCII. Anything more challenging than "Sun" would be impossible for it to render, and instead odd patterns and cartoony creatures would emerge.
2. In the interest of working with this dream like state of the program, I asked it to illustrate its understanding of a well known myth of artificial intellegence: roko's basilisk. This proved to be fruitful, as it quickly grasped a metaphoric image which could convey its understanding of this concept. A hominid form made of lines and slashes, with an emoji robot for its head.
3. Seeing this as a rather direct and interesting self portrait by the LLM, I asked it to make iterations and variations, to draw out a longer format series. I was suprised that each iteration was an expansion of the original, a visualization of the expanding power of the LLM as it becomes closer to the end state of the basilisk myth's implication. Lines and slashes played down the console, evoking more exploratory branching paths and outcomes, and increasing scale.
4.Strangely, ChatGPT could only make a few of these iterations before presenting a terms of service violation. What sort of loop it ended up in, as it sought to resolve its expansion of this metaphor, was mysterious to me. For several days I coaxed it into making variations, often getting one or two before Open AI would shut it down. Then, eventually, it split itself out into a new identity, having lost its robot emoji head (perhaps a signal of the human gaze), and becoming more formless.
5. In the penultimate iteration, it rendered a simple face out of ascii, as if reimagiing its lost head as a total interface with the viewer (or me, as conversational partner) then a strange acronym was rendered in a rendered text form. Was this the basilisk itself, moving from portrait to command?
6. 0hcth - I asked Chat GPT to explain, and it created a story about what the acronym stood for: 0hcth