A GLITCHING AI. A MYSTERIOUS NAME. A DISCOVERY TOO STRANGE TO IGNORE.
When mathematician Matthew Watkins signed on to test an early version of ChatGPT, he expected dry technical work. Instead, he uncovered a series of “rare tokens” that made the system go haywire. Some produced gibberish. Others turned hostile. One trigger word – petertodd – sent the system into what looked like full-blown paranoia. Was it a simple bug? A backdoor planted by hackers? Or a glimpse into how AI really thinks?
Watkins’s search for answers pulls him deep into the secretive world of AI safety research – where billionaires play god, rogue chatbots make fortunes and enemies, and the line between science and belief blurs. What starts as a programming mystery becomes something much bigger: both a window into the eerie inner worlds of LLMs, and a cryptic clue to what might be history’s greatest heist.
The system has since been patched. The window is closed. But for a brief moment, we saw inside – and what looked back at us was maybe more human than we’d like to admit.
When mathematician Matthew Watkins signed on to test an early version of ChatGPT, he expected dry technical work. Instead, he uncovered a series of “rare tokens” that made the system go haywire. Some produced gibberish. Others turned hostile. One trigger word – petertodd – sent the system into what looked like full-blown paranoia. Was it a simple bug? A backdoor planted by hackers? Or a glimpse into how AI really thinks?
Watkins’s search for answers pulls him deep into the secretive world of AI safety research – where billionaires play god, rogue chatbots make fortunes and enemies, and the line between science and belief blurs. What starts as a programming mystery becomes something much bigger: both a window into the eerie inner worlds of LLMs, and a cryptic clue to what might be history’s greatest heist.
The system has since been patched. The window is closed. But for a brief moment, we saw inside – and what looked back at us was maybe more human than we’d like to admit.