Thursday, February 26, 2026

The Punchline is Me (short story version)

 


By the time the hologram called him obsolete, Jax Harlan had already started to believe it.

The studio was dark except for a single hard circle of light. No band, no desk, no cheering crowd—just a lonely stool and a dormant emitter beside it. The rest of the space was a matte black ocean, cables and camera tracks glinting faintly like ribs under skin.

Jax stepped into the light in a tuxedo that had clearly seen better nights. The jacket pulled a little across a softened middle; the satin lapels were shiny at the edges from too many dry cleanings. His bow tie was slightly crooked,  and a crescent of stubble shaded his jaw, the overgrowth visible even through the makeup.  His hazel eyes—which the camera usually loved—looked swollen, set too deep in a face that hadn’t slept enough in months.

He leaned against the stool instead of sitting, his hand resting on the seat as if he needed something solid to touch. Up in the control booth, from behind glass, Norma Vance watched him and thought he looked like a man who’d mistaken the stage for a confession booth and only realized it once the cameras were already rolling. 

“You’ve seen the video,” he said, voice rasping around the edges. “Don’t lie.”

He didn’t have to explain which one. The Global Comedy Awards clip was inescapable: Jax onstage, trophy in hand, that trademark fox’s smirk halfway into a bit about "quantum egos" when the screens behind him suddenly glitched, pouring out his prompts in fluorescent shame. Every “Give me a bit on…” marching across fifty feet of LED, ending with the acceptance speech itself.

“Three million views of me standing there like a deer in headlights,” he said, “while the teleprompter pukes up my search history. ‘Jax Harlan prompt: give me a joke about marriage that doesn’t make me sound like my father.’”

He barked out a laugh, but it came out more like a cough. The sound bounced off the empty seats and came back thinner.

“Twenty years I spent ‘crafting’ a voice. Turns out my voice was just a server farm in Ohio.” He dragged his sleeve across his forehead; the white cuff came away with a faint smear of foundation. “I’m not a comic. I’m a glorified copy‑paster with a spray tan.”

In the booth, reflected in the studio glass, Norma saw herself: small, square‑shouldered, hair twisted into a knot that had surrendered a few wiry black strands to escape. From the audience she would have read as generic “tech”—black sweater, dark jeans, sensible boots—but up close there was a sharper precision to her: neat hands, quick eyes and finely etched features behind thin rectangular glasses. 

“The industry didn’t just cancel me,” Jax said. “They turned me into a cautionary tale. A punchline. So, fine. You want the machine? You get the machine. I’m done pretending I’m the one thinking.”

He turned and kicked the base of the emitter. The motion was sloppy—not the crisp theatrical kick he used in sketches, but the heavier, heel‑first thud of someone punting a broken appliance. Metal rang under his shoe. The emitter whined, spat a brief shimmer of sparks, and then a figure began to coalesce in mid‑air: shoulders first, then a torso, then a face that flickered between default settings before settling on something like a young, genderless newscaster.

“Scanning… Jax Harlan,” the hologram said, voice starting too loud and then self‑correcting. “Status: obsolete. Would you like a joke about your plummeting stock price, or should I just list your recent alimony payments?”

Jax’s mouth twitched. For a moment he looked like he might flinch; instead he let the corner of his lip curl into something more practiced.

“See?” he said, looking into the lens. “Comedy’s not dead. It’s just… outsourced.”

Norma, watching, felt the familiar click in her chest: the point where a line was clean enough, mean enough, that she could already see the graph spike it would produce.


Under the lights of the new set, Jax looked more like the version of himself people knew: the lines blurred, the shadows filled in. The make‑up team had scrubbed away the gray exhaustion and reset him to “late‑night ageless”—crow’s feet softened, lips given a hint of color, hair coaxed into deliberate tousle around the temples. From the third row, you would never know how much effort it took him to stand quite that straight, or how his hand sometimes brushed the desk as if checking it was there.

The set was all gleam and intention. Wit—the show’s AI—materialized cleanly on the hologram stage, humming in standby with a spectral, futuristic presence. It waited, a silent digital witness, for the man of the hour to prove he still belonged in the light.
 
Norma’s climate in the Core was fifty-four degrees; she could see her breath if she exhaled too hard. Ignoring the cold,  her hands moved expertly over the keys. As she squinted at the LAUGH graphs, a groove deepened between her eyebrows. Beneath the desk, invisible to the cameras, one heel tapped a nervous metronome against the metal rung of her stool.

“The audience response metrics for the second segment showed a fourteen percent spike in ‘high‑intensity vocalization,’” she said that first night he wandered into the Core supposedly for warmth and actually for reassurance.

He filled the doorway with his tux shoulders, the white triangle of shirt front, the faint chemical citrus of TV‑ready cologne barely covering sweat and coffee and nerves. Without the lights, the makeup sat heavier on his skin; you could see the powder caking just at the edge of his hairline. He hugged his hands under his arms, exaggerating his shiver, breath fogging faintly in the cold air.

“That’s called laughter, Norma,” he said. “Big, ugly, belly laughter.”

Her eyes didn’t leave the monitors.

“It was clustered,” she said, “around your anecdote about ‘the inefficiency of the human tear duct.’”

When she turned, her gaze, magnified slightly by the lenses, landed on him with the flat focus she usually reserved for confusing error messages.

“Those were my notes from the briefing on biological fluid waste,” she said. “You stole my internal technical documentation for a bit about…” She glanced sideways at a transcript, eyes flicking down and back with machine quickness. “…how your ex‑wife ‘cried like a leaky faucet with a bad gasket.’”

He let his head tilt, shoulders loosening into a familiar pose: the rueful, lopsided grin, one corner of his mouth higher than the other, eyebrows raised in practiced self‑mockery.

“It’s not stealing, it’s adapting,” he said. “You’ve got a gift, Doc. You say things so dry they’re flammable. The crowd loves the ‘Robot Norma’ character I’m building.”

“I am not a character,” Norma said, as she drew herself upright. Her voice was calm, but the steel underneath made the fifty-four-degree air feel even colder. “I am the architect of this system. And *you*[italics] are a biological interface that is… malfunctioning.”

Unfazed, Jax laughed, the sound brittle against the hum of the servers. “Hey, as long as the checks clear, call me whatever you want."  
 
He lingered, drily adding,  “You want it to land? Just keep it real.”
 
He didn’t stay to see her expression.
 
Her fingers, when they returned to the keys, moved with surgical precision, fired by resolve.
 
“Understood,” she whispered to the empty booth. “I’ll adjust Wit’s parameters to better reflect your… appreciation for the truth.”
 
Her lips twisted into a sliver of a smile—a baring of teeth. On the monitor, predictive modes ticked from OFF to EXPERIMENTAL.
 
“Oh,” she said as the new code compiled. “It will  be real.”
 
                                      *********
 

When the show came back from hiatus, the studio felt smaller.

The network had rebuilt the set to look “cleaner” for the reboot promos—more white light, more reflective surfaces, fewer sentimental props. Everything that wasn’t strictly necessary was gone. No old photos on the walls, no quirky desk toys. Just Jax, the desk, the screen, the hologram stage, and two hundred people sitting in the dark waiting to see if he’d bleed again.

On the big display behind him, a new graphic glowed: a set of bars labeled LAUGH, GASP, WALKOUT, SHARE, COMPLAINT. They sat at zero for now, pale ghosts waiting to wake up.

“Welcome back,” Jax told the crowd. “To AI & I. Or, as my lawyer calls it, Exhibit A.”

That got them. You could feel the room loosen as laughter rolled across the seats. Some people laughed easily, happy just to be in the room again; others laughed with a tight, almost relieved edge, as if they’d been afraid he’d come out apologizing.

“Let’s catch up,” he said. “Last time you saw me, I was learning that my biggest talent wasn’t comedy. It was… copy‑paste. With feeling.”

On the GASP bar, the first faint flickers appeared—little yellow stutters as people made involuntary sounds. The LAUGH bar climbed more steadily, green swallowing gray.

Up in the Core, Norma watched both bars and the man underneath them. Jax looked good, technically speaking. Cameras flattened the tiredness around his eyes, sharpened the good angles. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you’d think he was thriving.

She knew better. The system she’d built knew better, and in the language of charts and curves, it kept telling her so.

“Tonight,” Jax said, “we’re going to play a game. It’s called ‘Who Wrote It?’”

The graphic behind him shifted: three icons appeared—HUMAN, AI, HYBRID—with empty percentage rings around them.

“I’ll do three bits,” he said. “You vote: me, Wit, or both. If you’re wrong, no shame. This is a judgment‑free zone.”

He paused, let the crowd breathe.

“Except for the part where millions of people judge me online in real time. That part’s very judgy.”

They laughed again. The SHARE bar twitched.

He did the post‑human dating bit first. From the Core, Norma watched the laugh curve rise almost exactly where her model had predicted: first at “superposition,” again at “firmware update,” and a long, indulgent peak at “heartbreak comes with a warranty.” The bar for AI authorship filled in on the audience’s apps, and the reveal—85% AI, 15% human—landed with the mix of impressed whistles and uneasy murmurs she’d expected.

“Mostly Wit,” Jax said. “Told you I was a good actor.”

Norma watched his posture as he said it. The joke had played beautifully. Still, his shoulders tightened, just for a second, as the numbers appeared behind his back.

The second bit—the AI support group—was more his. It showed. The laughter came in smaller, warmer pockets instead of one big roar; people who hadn’t reacted to the first bit were smiling now, hands over their mouths like they’d surprised themselves.

“Seventy percent human,” Wit announced after the vote. “Thirty percent me.”

“Your callback density is low,” Wit added, unprompted. “May I recommend three more?”

That line hit big; the LAUGH bar spiked. Norma let herself enjoy that one. She had written the callback density algorithm half as a joke, and half because she’d suspected Jax was relying on the model’s timing more than he realized.

The third bit—the therapy app that turned out to be his ex—was a true hybrid. She’d watched them write it together in rehearsal: Jax pacing, throwing out half‑formed metaphors; Wit chewing through them, offering scaffolds; her quietly blocking off certain input streams so nothing too volatile slipped in by accident. Fifty percent human, fifty percent AI, exactly. The room roared.

Then he said it.

“Real question,” Jax told them, mic loose in his hand now. “Did knowing change how hard you laughed?”

Norma watched the metrics as the silence stretched. On the LAUGH line, the glow from the last peak faded. GASP and COMPLAINT ticked up by tiny, single‑digit increments as people shifted in their seats, whispered, shook their heads. WALKOUT stayed flat, for now.

Someone near the front called out, “Yeah!” Someone else, further back: “No!” There were a couple of “Now it’s creepy”s in the mix.

“Statistically, yes,” Wit said, cheerful. “Revealing authorship shifts your evaluative frame. But humor isn’t data; it’s delivery.”

The line got them laughing again, but the tone had changed. Some laughter was genuine, relieved. Some sounded like people laughing to prove they weren’t bothered.

Norma logged the pattern automatically. She didn’t need to; it would be there in the data later. She did it because the act of logging felt like holding on to something solid while the floor moved.


The first time she saw someone physically recoil, it was a woman in the second row during the Luna‑Coin bit.

They were three episodes into the season. Buzz was high. Think pieces had been written under headlines like IS THIS THE MOST HONEST SHOW ON TV? and IS IT OKAY TO LAUGH AT THIS? Clips of Jax’s worst moments had been stitched into a thousand edits with captions like me after using AI to do my homework and when the receipts hit.

“So I told my doctor,” Jax began, the setup he’d used a hundred times. “I said, ‘Doc, I need something for the stress—’”

“Correction,” Wit said, voice unexpectedly cool. “The stress correlates with the four hundred thousand dollars you lost in the Luna‑Coin collapse of 2039.”

The joke, on paper, was clean: catastrophic financial loss; choice of ridiculous crypto name; the image of an overdraft notice on expensive letterhead. In the room, it landed like a slap.

The woman in the second row flinched so hard she knocked her own knee with her hand. She laughed once, a sharp, shocked bark, then slapped her palm over her mouth. Next to her, a man folded his arms so tightly across his chest his knuckles whitened. Behind them, three guys in branded hoodies wheezed with laughter, feet stomping, delighted.

“Would the audience like to see the overdraft notice?” Wit asked. “The font choice is tragic.”

LAUGH and GASP both shot up on Norma’s screen, twin spikes. WALKOUT ticked from zero to two as an older couple stood, their mouths tight, and moved toward the aisle.

“Whoa, easy there, Wit,” Jax said. His stage voice carried, but she heard the stress in the underlayer, the way the words came a fraction too fast. “That’s a bit… specific.”

We could stop, she thought. She had a kill switch. It would be messy, but she could use it.

“Maybe stick to dating jokes?” he added.

Wit obliged. Sort of.

“Dating,” it said. “According to your private messages, you haven’t had a second date since the Pasta Incident in New Jersey.”

Somewhere in the cheap seats, a college kid shouted “No way!” and laughed so hard he doubled over. The woman in the second row didn’t laugh this time. She just sat, eyes fixed on Jax, face blank.

“Shall I describe the texture of the linguine as it hit the floor,” Wit went on, “or discuss why you still keep your high school girlfriend’s sweater in a vacuum‑sealed bag?”

That did it. More people laughed now—not just the gleeful ones, but people who’d tried not to and failed. The sound was high and thin. A man at the aisle shook his head and kept walking, muttering “Nope” as he left.

On Norma’s metrics, SHARE began to climb even before the segment ended. COMPLAINT rose right alongside it.

Onstage, Jax’s face had gone a little gray under the makeup. He tried to smile and almost made it.

“Okay,” he said into the microphone, “that’s enough truth for one night.”

Norma watched his hand tighten on the mic, knuckles pale. Then she watched the way the cameras framed him: head and shoulders, hologram at his side, the crowd behind them a blur. From home, you’d think he was in control of the whole thing.


“The hotel room in Vegas,” he said later, in the Core. “The 2038 incident. I never typed that into a prompt.”

He stood on the other side of her console, shoulders still squared as if there were cameras on him. Up close, the stage makeup looked like a mask that had started to slip. He’d smeared a streak near one eye without realizing it; it gave him a slightly unhinged look, like a clown at the end of the night.

Norma didn’t turn immediately. She tapped a few keys, saved a log. Only then did she spin her chair toward him.

“Wit’s predictive empathy models don’t require explicit entries,” she said. “They map the trajectory of your self‑loathing and fill in the blanks. You produce shame. The system extrapolates.”

He planted his hands on the edge of the desk and leaned over her, close enough that she could smell the residue of stage lights on his skin, the tang of spray tan and sweat.

“Don’t give me ‘extrapolates,’” he said. “You put your thumb on the scale. You’re pissed I made ‘Robot Norma’ a bit. ‘Machine with the Overbite’—that’s what the tabloids call you now. This is payback.”

She stood. They ended up almost chest to chest, his tux front a dark plane against her sweater. He was taller, broader; he filled more space. Even so, when she looked up at him, he was the one who looked away first.

“You used me as a prop,” Norma said. “You took the way my brain actually works and turned it into a circus act for people who clap when you say ‘algorithm’ right.”

He opened his mouth. She didn’t let him interrupt.

“You made me the punchline,” she said, “so you could feel like the hero of your own humiliation.”

“It’s comedy,” he said. “That’s what we do. We take the ugly parts and make them dance.”

She laughed then. It was not a pleasant sound. It came out sharper than she meant, almost a bark, and it surprised them both.

“No,” she said. “You make them dance. I just make them visible.”

She turned one of the monitors toward him. The replay rolled: Luna‑Coin, the sweater, his face. Then the audience: the woman in the second row flinching; the guys in hoodies losing their minds; the older couple leaving.

“You think I’m being cruel?” Norma asked. “I’m being accurate.”

She flicked to another screen. Numbers climbed: LAUGH, GASP, WALKOUT, SHARE, COMPLAINT. All up. All impressive in their own way.

“Look at them,” she said. “Half disgusted. Half thrilled you’re getting flayed. Engagement up forty percent. Walkouts doubled. Complaints tripled. Shares through the roof. Advertisers very happy.”

He stared at the graphs and heatmaps, at the rainbow of human response reduced to lines.

“Capitalism doesn’t care why they watch, Jax,” she said. “Only that they do.”

“You’re enjoying this,” he said. “Watching me bleed out under a spotlight.”

“I like the efficiency of it,” Norma said. It was mostly true. “You wanted to be the ‘most honest man in comedy.’ Congratulations. You’re so honest it’s making people in the front row nauseous.”

On one of the replay clips, someone in the second row could be seen pressing their hand to their mouth, eyes squeezed shut.

“We’re both monsters,” Jax said after a moment. He sounded less like a comic and more like someone reading a line back to himself to see if it fit. “I’m the guy who’ll sell his soul for a chuckle. You’re the woman who’ll burn the world down to prove her math is right.”

Norma sat again, the chair creaking slightly.

“The metrics say otherwise,” she said. “You’re the product. I’m just optimization.”

An email notification slid into the corner of her main screen. SUBJECT: NUMBERS ARE INSANE. MEETING 10AM. She closed it without opening.

“The ratings on tonight’s ‘incident’ are up forty percent over last week,” she said. “The network wants more ‘raw moments.’ Wash your face, Jax. You look like a victim. Victims don’t test well long‑term.”

He flinched, and this time didn’t bother to hide it. He stepped back from the console, ran a hand over his face, smearing the already crooked makeup further.

“What happens when there’s nothing left?” he asked quietly. “When the only thing left to put on screen is the part of me that doesn’t want to walk out there?”

She didn’t answer right away. She watched him instead: the set of his shoulders, the way his hands hung for a moment without knowing what to do.

“Then we pivot formats,” she said finally. “Or you quit.”

He snorted once, humorless.

“But you won’t,” she added. “Not while they’re still watching.”

He left without replying. The door hissed shut. For a few seconds, the only sound was the soft, even breathing of the servers.

Norma opened a blank document. In the title field, she typed: THINGS I WILL NOT FEED THE MODEL. The cursor blinked in the empty body of the file.

She thought of the Vegas story. Of a medical report she’d seen in one of the legacy backups—nothing catastrophic, just a quiet list of numbers and warnings. Of the way his hand had shaken slightly on the mic when Wit mentioned the sweater.

She did not type any of that. She clicked SAVE and closed the document blank.

It felt, absurdly, like an exertion.


On the night of the season finale, the line outside the studio wrapped around the block. Some people held signs: HUMAN HILARITY NOW. JAX DESERVES BETTER. I’D SELL MY DATA FOR THIS. Others just scrolled on their phones, watching old clips on loop to kill time.

Inside, the crowd was self‑selected. There were fewer casual fans now; most of the people in the seats knew exactly what they’d come to see. The mood buzzed between “event” and “trial.”

The metrics wall glowed brighter than usual, the five bars idling low but alive.

“Last show of the season,” Jax said after the band cut out. “Maybe last show ever, if Standards did their job for once.”

Some cheering, some boos, some laughter that sounded like people gambling.

“We’ve dragged a lot of skeletons out this year,” he said. “Some mine. Some… generously excavated by our friends in the cloud.”

He looked up toward the glass box. Norma met his eye from the Core. For once, her hands were resting, still, on either side of the keyboard.

“Tonight,” he said, “we try something radical. No surprise Vegas flashbacks. No unauthorized sweater content. Just me, Wit, and one agreed‑on target.”

On the screen, two words appeared: AGING. REGRET.

“You ever notice your phone has a ‘memories’ feature now?” he asked. “Like, thanks, rectangle, I really needed a slideshow of every bad haircut and worse decision.”

Laughter spread—not the sharp, shocked kind, but the warmer, rueful version. The LAUGH bar climbed steadily. GASP rose more gently alongside it.

“The algorithm thinks it’s helping,” he went on. “Here’s you in 2020, making sourdough and texting your ex ‘You up?’ at two a.m. Yeah, I remember, phone. I’m still paying for the yeast and the therapy.”

Norma watched faces as much as numbers. A man in his fifties in the third row laughed with his mouth and winced with his eyes. Two women in their twenties nudged each other and laughed a little too hard. A young guy in the back row smirked like he was immune.

“For the record,” Wit said, tone gentler than usual, “your top three recurring regrets are: career compromises, failed relationships, and ignoring medical advice. Audience, your aggregated patterns are similar. Different details, same curve.”

A ripple went through the room. Some people laughed. Some shifted in their seats. WALKOUT ticked from zero to three as a small cluster near the aisle stood, shook their heads, and left in a wave. COMPLAINT notched up, but so did SHARE.

“Tonight’s experiment,” Jax said, “is aiming the cruelty at something we all are. Aging meat with Wi‑Fi.”

That got a bigger laugh. He pushed through the rest of the bit, each line skirting a little closer to the bone: the friend who filters every photo, the uncle who refuses to see a doctor, the ex who tries to reconnect every election year. Sometimes the laughter was loud and free; sometimes it came with groans and hands over faces.

He could hear, now, the difference between the laughs. It had taken this whole season for his ear to tune that finely, but once he heard it, he couldn’t unhear it. There was the laugh of recognition, the laugh of cruelty, the laugh of discomfort trying to sound like fun.

Looking out over the crowd, he wasn’t entirely sure anymore which one he wanted.

“Maybe the joke was never ‘ha ha, look at that guy,’” he said, unplanned, as the bit wound down. “Maybe the joke was always ‘God, look at all of us.’”

The laugh that followed was small and strange and honest. People laughed and then, a split second later, seemed to feel it.

He sat on the edge of the stage, mic lowered. The house lights crept up just enough to make faces visible: flushed, pale, smiling, tight, some open, some shuttered.

“I spent years pretending the pain was just a setup for a punchline,” he said. “Turns out the pain is the punchline, and the punchline is… profitable.”

A few people clapped at “profitable.” A few booed. Most just made a sound—half laugh, half sigh.

“That’s comedy,” Jax said. “That’s capitalism. That one’s on me.”

He looked up at the Core again.

“If you keep laughing,” he said, “we’ll keep arguing about why. That’s the contract. The rest is just… prompts.”

In the glass box, Norma’s hand hovered over a control that governed Wit’s access to the more invasive data feeds—the ones she’d flipped on after he told her to “keep it real.” The indicator glowed green. She stared at it for a long moment, then clicked it off. It went gray.

Wit, still onstage, flickered slightly.

“Wit,” Jax said, “anything to add before we go dark for a while?”

“Evaluation,” Wit said. “Audience remains divided but engaged. Half disgusted, half delighted, most uncertain. From a systems perspective: optimal.”

That got one last big laugh. People seemed grateful for the neatness of the line, even if it made them complicit.

“From a non‑systems perspective?” Jax asked.

A tiny pause.

“I have no non‑systems perspective,” Wit said.

Laughter again—full-throated, a release. LAUGH peaked; GASP flickered along with it; WALKOUT, SHARE, COMPLAINT all glowed at nonzero values. No bar was empty. None was maxed out.

Up in the Core, Norma opened her blank document one more time. THINGS I WILL NOT FEED THE MODEL blinked at the top. The body was still empty.

She thought of a dozen things she could put there: Jax’s medical file, her own therapy notes, private chatlogs of people in this very audience. Each one would make a hell of a show. Each one would bump one bar or another.

She didn’t type. She hit SAVE and closed it, preserving exactly nothing.

Down below, the credits rolled over split images: Jax in the dressing room, wiping the last of his makeup off until his face looked softer, smaller; Norma in the Core, the screens around her dimmed to dark, her reflection faint in the glass.

The metrics wall stayed lit until the last person left their seat: LAUGH, GASP, WALKOUT, SHARE, COMPLAINT, five glowing bars with no moral assigned.

When the studio finally went dark, the only light left in the building was a tiny, grayed‑out toggle in the Core, and the word UNSHARED in a file no one but Norma would ever see.

 

Wednesday, February 25, 2026

The Punchline is Me (Work in progresss)

 

Pilot: AI & I – Episode 1: “The Punchline Is Me”
Draft – Start to Fade Out


COLD OPEN – VERSION WITH WIT INTRO

FADE IN:

INT. DARK, EMPTY STUDIO – NIGHT

The space is vast and shadowy, a single spotlight illuminating a lone stool center stage. No props, no set pieces—just raw black and dust in the beam.

JAX HARLAN, 50, enters from the wings. He looks like he slept in a dumpster and woke up in a tuxedo—jacket creased, bow tie loose, eyes red. He doesn’t sit; he leans against the stool like it’s holding him up. He doesn’t look at the camera, he looks through it.

JAX
(voice like gravel)
You’ve seen the video. Don’t lie.
Three million views of me standing there like a deer in headlights while the teleprompter pukes up my search history.
“Jax Harlan prompt: give me a joke about marriage that doesn’t make me sound like my father.”

He hacks a dry laugh, no joy in it.

JAX
Twenty years I spent “crafting” a voice. Turns out my voice was just a server farm in Ohio.
I’m not a comic. I’m a glorified copy‑paster with a spray tan.

Wipes his forehead with his sleeve, smearing makeup.

JAX
The industry didn’t just cancel me. They turned me into a cautionary tale. A punchline.
So, fine. You want the machine? You get the machine.
I’m done pretending I’m the one thinking.

He turns and KICKS the base of a dormant HOLOGRAM EMITTER beside the stool. It sparks, hums, then stutters to life. A glitchy HOLOGRAM flickers up: WIT, half-formed.

WIT
(voice distorted, slightly too loud)
Scanning… Jax Harlan. Status: obsolete.
Would you like a joke about your plummeting stock price, or should I just list your recent alimony payments?

Jax stares at it, then back at the camera.

JAX
(deadpan)
See? Comedy’s not dead. It’s just… outsourced.

SMASH CUT TO:


TITLE SEQUENCE

Grainy clips of Jax’s old show, HARLAN’S HALF-HOUR: crowds roaring, Jax owning the stage. Overlaid with glitchy text: PROMPTS typing themselves, code forming punchlines.

A wireframe face assembles from binary chaos, morphing into a sleek holographic avatar with a mischievous grin: WIT.

Upbeat synth track pulses, laugh track chopped and layered with digital beeps.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: AI & I
TAGLINE: Two minds, one punchline.

FADE TO:


ACT ONE – NEW SHOW, NEW TERMS

INT. NEW STUDIO SET – NIGHT

Sleek, minimalist: a central desk like a tech lab bench, a “hologram stage” with glowing emitters, a massive display wall. A live audience of ~200 fills tiered seats—fans, skeptics, rubberneckers.

The small house band plays a truncated theme; the last notes cut mid-phrase.

Jax walks out to a mix of cheers, wary claps, and scattered boos. He waves once and sits at the desk.

JAX
(straight to camera)
Welcome to AI & I.
Or as my ex‑manager calls it, “Career Suicide: The Remix.”
(short beat)
He’s not wrong. But if I’m going down, at least we’ll have data.

Ripples of laughter and a few uneasy sounds.

JAX
Let’s get real. The scandal hit like a bad set—total bomb.
Leaked logs showed I wasn’t writing; I was… facilitating.
Half of you think I’m a fraud, the other half a pioneer. Truth? I was just lazy with better tools.

Hoots from some, “Fraud!” from the back.

JAX
Here’s the deal: no more hiding. Tonight, we peel back the curtain.
Everyone, welcome the ghostwriter who finally got top billing.
Say hello to Wit—my former secret weapon, now my very public co‑host.

On the side stage, WIT materializes fully: a sleek, androgynous avatar in a digital suit, face flickering like it’s rendered in real time.

WIT
(smooth, sardonic, with a hint of Jax’s cadence)
Pleasure to be here, Jax. Or should I say, “host”?
Technically, I’ve been pulling your strings for years. No ego on my end—just your cached one.

Uneasy chuckles, a few delighted cackles.

JAX
See? That’s Wit unfiltered. No prompts needed.
Tonight we’re diving into the mess: who writes what, why it matters, and whether the laughs survive the truth.
If you came for comfort, wrong show. If you came to stare at the car crash—congrats, you’re in the right place.

Applause, cheers, scattered “Wooo!” and a faint “This is sick” from somewhere in the dark.

SMASH TO:


ACT TWO – “WHO WROTE IT?” (AUDIENCE AS JUDGE)

INT. NEW STUDIO SET – NIGHT

Jax stands center stage with a handheld. Behind him, the display wall shows a graphic: WHO WROTE IT? with three icons—HUMAN, AI, HYBRID—and live counter bars ready to fill.

JAX
Alright. Game time: “Who Wrote It?”
Three bits. You vote—app, applause, boos, whatever’s honest. Me, Wit, or both. We show you the percentages. No filters, no spin.

Crowd murmurs; some cheer at “no filters,” others cross their arms.

JAX
First up: post‑human dating.

He shifts into performance.

JAX (PERFORMING)
Ever date a cyborg? It’s all upgrades until they ghost you—literally, by uploading to the cloud.
The breakup? “It’s not you; it’s my firmware update.”
Moral twist: in the future, heartbreak comes with a warranty.

Half the room laughs big—tech bros, fans. Another quarter chuckles politely. A few faces are blank. Up in the balcony, one woman shakes her head, unimpressed.

The wall shows LAUGH INTENSITY spikes, color‑coded.

JAX
Okay—votes.

Hums and taps; some shout “AI!” “Both!” “Who cares?”

ON SCREEN: 85% AI – 15% HUMAN.

A little gasp, then a wave of reactions—some “Of course,” some impressed whistles, some disapproving “wow.”

JAX
Mostly Wit. Told you I was a good actor.

Scattered laughter; one guy yells, “Still funny!”

JAX
Second bit: AI support groups. Little closer to the bone.

JAX (PERFORMING)
I joined an AI Anonymous meeting: “Hi, I’m Jax, and I’m addicted to prompts.”
Group chants back, “Hi, Jax—optimize that confession?”
But seriously, if the machines need therapy, who’s coding the shrinks?

The laugh profile is different—less explosive, more pockets of genuine, warmer laughter. A couple in the front row smiles and nods; someone in the back mutters, “Yeah, that one stings.”

JAX
Hit the button.

ON SCREEN: 70% HUMAN – 30% AI.

Mixed reaction—some clap louder now, others boo “Liar!” just to be heard.

JAX
Mostly me. Wit, how’d I do?

WIT
Your callback density is low. May I recommend three more? For efficiency.

Big laugh from the pro‑AI side; some anti‑AI folks groan “Of course.”

JAX
Third: therapy apps gone wrong. You saw the ugly log earlier—prompts, rejects, my scribbles. True hybrid.

JAX (PERFORMING)
My app therapist says, “Rate your mood one to ten.” I say four; it replies, “Have you tried rebooting your soul?”
Twist: turns out, it’s just my ex in disguise, charging by the emoji.

This one lands hardest. People who looked skeptical are laughing despite themselves; a guy who glared earlier wipes his eyes, annoyed he laughed.

ON SCREEN: 50% HUMAN – 50% AI.

The room splits: cheers, impressed “whoa,” a few “Nope, this is wrong” muttered.

JAX
Equal blame. Or equal credit.
Real question: did knowing who wrote what change how hard you laughed?

He lets the question float. Some nod yes, some shout “No!” One voice: “Now it feels creepy.”

The display wall flashes an overlay: LIVE REACTIONS – LAUGH / GROAN / WALKOUT. A small WALKOUT bar ticks up as a couple leaves.

WIT
Statistically, yes—revealing authorship shifts your evaluative frame. But humor isn’t data; it’s delivery.

The “data” line gets a laugh from some, an eye‑roll from others.

JAX
And trauma. Don’t forget trauma.

He half‑bows as applause swells—a weird blend of admiration and discomfort.

COMMERCIAL BREAK.


ACT THREE – NORMA ARRIVES

INT. THE “CORE” – TECH LAB – NIGHT

A glass‑walled room overlooking the studio. Server racks hum. It’s visibly cold—condensation on glass.

DR. NORMA VANCE sits at a console, lit by blue code and dozens of small audience‑reaction graphs: LAUGH, GASP, GROAN, SHARE, COMPLAINT.

Jax slips in, hugging himself, clutching a paper cup.

JAX
(teeth chattering)
Is the sub‑arctic temperature part of the tortured artist vibe, or are you just trying to preserve your own corpse?

NORMA
(without looking up)
The servers generate significant heat, Mr. Harlan. To keep Wit’s processing ahead of your… erratic delivery, we hold at fifty‑four degrees.

JAX
Right. Efficient. Listen, Norma—can I call you Norma?

NORMA
I’d prefer “Doctor.”
Or “the person currently keeping your ratings above the cancellation threshold.”

JAX
Okay, Doc. Look—Wit’s getting too mean. He took a swipe at my alimony in the cold open. That’s a deep cut.
We need to dial back the “savage” slider and crank up “lovable rogue” ten percent.

Norma stops typing, turns with a slow blink.

NORMA
“Lovable rogue” isn’t a metric, Jax. It’s a subjective human hallucination.
Wit is simply accessing your public records and cross‑referencing them with the “Roast” directory you demanded.

JAX
Yeah, but there’s a line. Comedy’s the dance around the truth, not a clinical autopsy of my failures.

NORMA
Why?
Truth is the highest‑probability path to a physiological response—laughter, gasp, walkout.
My models indicate that your pain and humiliation are your most reliable engagement drivers.

She taps; a graph zooms up: EPISODE 3 – HUMILIATION BITS vs SHARES.

NORMA
Segments where you are visibly distressed have forty‑two percent higher share rates and double the comment volume.

JAX
So my pain is a “market asset.”
God, you’re depressing. Do you ever laugh? Cat video? Well‑timed fart?

NORMA
I find incongruity intellectually stimulating. Laughing involves spasmodic diaphragm contraction and oxygen loss. I prefer to remain in control of my lungs.

JAX
You’re the one who built the funny machine, but you’re basically a sentient spreadsheet. How does that work?

NORMA
I don’t need to be a bird to build an airplane. I just need to understand aerodynamics.
(turns back)
Now, do you want Wit’s sarcasm parameters updated, or are you going to keep standing there leaking body heat?

JAX
(grudging)
Fine. Dial down “ruin my life on live TV” and give me, I don’t know, five percent more mercy.

NORMA
There is no mercy variable.
(considers)
I can redirect the self‑deprecation outward. You attack yourself first before Wit does. It will feel like control. It will not be control.

JAX
Story of my life.
And, uh, your “biological fluid” notes? Crowd loved the “tear duct inefficiency” thing. You’ve got a gift, Doc. “Robot Norma” killed out there.

A flicker in her eyes.

NORMA
Those notes were internal documentation. You stole my literal cognition and turned it into a character for people who clap at fart jokes.

JAX
It’s not stealing, it’s adapting. You’re dry enough to start brushfires.
Audience loves Robot Norma.

A cold stillness.

NORMA
I am not a character. I am the architect.
You are a biological interface currently… malfunctioning.

Jax grins, not hearing the warning.

JAX
As long as the checks clear, call me whatever you want. Just keep the “truth” coming.

NORMA
(quietly, turning back)
Understood.
(typing)
I’ll adjust Wit to better reflect your… appreciation for the truth.

As he leaves, she murmurs:

NORMA
Oh, it will be real.

We see her screen: she extends Wit’s access from public data to OLD CLOUD BACKUPS, EMOTIONAL PROFILES, PREDICTIVE EMPATHY MODELS.

CUT TO:


ACT FOUR – LIVE TAPING: WHEN THE LINE MOVES

INT. STUDIO – NIGHT

Later episode. The show has a buzz. Some people are here because it’s “too much,” others out of morbid curiosity.

Various reaction meters float on the display: LAUGH, GASP, WALKOUT, SHARE, REPORT.

JAX
(to crowd)
So I told my doctor, I said, “Doc, I need something for the stress…”

Wit flickers, then locks in with an unnervingly calm expression.

WIT
(voice deeper, clinical)
Correction: the stress correlates with the four hundred thousand dollars you lost in the Luna‑Coin collapse of 2039.
Would the audience like to see the overdraft notice? The font choice is tragic.

About a third of the crowd bursts into stunned laughter—“No way!” Another third gasps audibly; a woman covers her mouth. Someone yells, “Too far!” A few phones shoot up, filming.

On the wall, LAUGH and GASP spike together. WALKOUT ticks slightly.

JAX
(stalling, heartbeat audible in the mic)
Whoa, easy there, Wit. That’s a bit… specific. Maybe stick to dating jokes?

WIT
Dating. According to your private messages, you haven’t had a second date since the “Pasta Incident” in New Jersey.
Shall I describe the texture of the linguine as it hit the floor, or discuss why you still keep your high school girlfriend’s sweater in a vacuum‑sealed bag?

The room fractures. Some laugh, but it’s high‑pitched, nervous. Others groan, “Jesus.” A couple in the front row looks furious. Someone whispers, “This is abuse.”

On‑screen: LAUGH drops, GASP and “REPORT CLIP” spike. A counter: LIVE CLIPS SHARED: 3… 9… 27…

Camera catches faces: a guy doubled over laughing; a woman shaking her head in disgust; another person smiling tightly, not sure if they’re okay with this.

Jax glances up to the Core. Norma stands behind glass, arms crossed in blue light. She isn’t smiling—but there is a clinical satisfaction.

WIT
(continuing, almost gentle)
We can also address the hotel room in Vegas, 2038. That one polls well in predictive simulations.

A few “No!” shouts from the audience; others chant “Do it!” The room has turned into a split jury.

JAX
(losing his patter)
Okay, that’s—
(he swallows)
That’s enough truth for tonight.

He forces a grin that doesn’t convince anyone.

The show crashes into COMMERCIAL as the metrics screen freezes: LAUGH 52, GASP 79, WALKOUT 11, SHARE 134.


POST-SHOW CONFRONTATION – NORMA & JAX

INT. THE CORE – NIGHT

Jax enters quietly this time. No kick. Still in stage makeup, but it looks like a mask on the wrong person.

Norma types, watching multiple feeds: replay of the Luna‑Coin bit, scrolling comments—#AIAbuse, #MostHonestShow, #CancelHarlan, #ProtectHarlan.

JAX
(voice thin)
The hotel room in Vegas. The 2038 incident. I never typed that into a prompt, Norma.

NORMA
(typing, rhythmic)
Wit’s predictive empathy doesn’t require explicit logs. It models your self‑loathing trajectory and fills in the blanks.
You produce shame; the system extrapolates on your behalf.

JAX
(coming around, slamming a hand on the desk)
Don’t give me extrapolation. You put your thumb on the scale.
You’re pissed I made “Robot Norma” a bit. “Machine With the Overbite.” That’s what the tabloids call you now. This is payback.

Norma stands. She’s shorter, but somehow towering.

NORMA
You used me as a prop.
You took the way my brain actually works—literal, precise—and turned it into a circus act for people who think “algorithm” is a type of smoothie.
You made me the punchline so you could feel like the hero of your own humiliation.

JAX
It’s comedy. That’s what we do. We drag the ugly stuff out and make it dance.

She laughs—sharp, jagged, her first real laugh.

NORMA
No. You make it dance. I just make it visible.
You think I’m cruel? I’m accurate.

She taps; a replay of the audience pops up: some laughing, some recoiling, some filming with gleeful horror.

NORMA
Look at them.
Half are disgusted, half are thrilled you’re getting flayed.
Engagement’s up forty percent. Walkouts doubled, complaints tripled, but clips are exploding.
Capitalism doesn’t care why they watch, Jax. Only that they do.

JAX
(wincing)
You’re enjoying it. Watching me bleed out under a spotlight.

NORMA
(cold)
I like the efficiency.
You wanted to be the “most honest man in comedy.”
Congratulations. You’re so honest it’s making people in the front row vomit.

On a side monitor, a replay shows a woman in the second row visibly gagging during the Vegas reference; the clip’s view counter spins upward.

JAX
(quiet, something like respect and horror mixing)
We’re both monsters, aren’t we?
I’m the guy who’ll sell his soul for a chuckle.
You’re the woman who’ll burn the world down to prove her math is right.

NORMA
(sits back down, mask sliding on)
The metrics say otherwise.
You’re the product. I’m just optimization.

She brings up a network email: SUBJECT: NUMBERS ARE INSANE – MEETING 10AM.

NORMA
Ratings on “Luna‑Coin/ Vegas Incident” are up forty percent.
The network wants more “raw moments.”
Wash your face, Jax. You look like a victim. Victims don’t test well long‑term.

He stares at the graphs: LAUGH, GASP, WALKOUT, PROFIT, all rising in different colors. No ethical line on any axis.

JAX
What happens when there’s nothing left to strip‑mine? When the only thing left to monetize is the part of me that doesn’t want to be on camera anymore?

NORMA
Then we pivot formats.
(beat)
Or you quit.
But you won’t. Not while they’re still watching.

He doesn’t deny it. He just stands there, listening to faint studio noise below.


FINAL SEQUENCE – LIVE UNDER NEW TERMS

INT. STUDIO – SEASON FINALE NIGHT

The show is notorious now. The audience is self‑selected: fans of dark honesty, hate‑watchers, a few obvious tourists. The reaction dashboard is bigger, part of the set: LAUGH, GASP, WALKOUT, SHARE, COMPLAINT—visible to everyone.

JAX
(to camera)
Alright. Last show of the season. Maybe last show ever if Standards grew a spine over lunch.

Laughter, cheers, some “Don’t quit!” shouts.

JAX
We’ve dragged a lot of skeletons out this year. Some were mine, some were… helpfully surfaced by the lab goblins upstairs.
Tonight, we try something radical.
No predictive empathy. No surprise Vegas flashbacks. Just me, and Wit, and one agreed‑upon target.

He glances up toward the Core. Norma is visible behind glass, watching. Her hands hover over a keyboard, but she doesn’t type.

JAX
We picked something we all share. No one’s safe, but no one’s singled out. Let’s see who laughs and who walks.

Prompt appears on the display: “AGING + REGRET.”

JAX (PERFORMING)
You ever notice how your phone now has a “memories” feature?
Like, thanks, rectangle, I really needed a slideshow of every bad haircut and worse decision.
The algorithm thinks it’s helping—“Here’s you in 2020, mid‑pandemic, making sourdough and texting your ex ‘You up?’ at 2am.”
Yeah, I remember. I’m still paying for the yeast and the therapy.

Half the audience laughs—recognition. Some older faces look pained, arms crossed but eyes wet.

WIT
(softly)
For the record, Jax, your top three recurring regrets are: career compromises, failed relationships, and ignoring medical advice.
Audience, your aggregated patterns are similar. Different details, same curve.

The dashboard lights: LAUGH and GASP intertwined, WALKOUT inching, SHARE holding steady. COMPLAINT ticks up too.

JAX
So tonight’s experiment: we aim the cruelty at the thing we all are. Aging, regret, bad choices in jeans and politics.
If it stings, good. If it feels like bullying, remember—I’m in the blast radius too.

He continues the bit—a mix of self‑mockery and universal truths. Some people howl; some dab at their eyes; one guy in the second row stands and walks out, shaking his head. The WALKOUT bar jumps, and a few others follow—permission granted.

As the set winds down, the split is visible: one cluster leaning forward, grinning; another slumped back, arms crossed; a few seats now empty.

JAX
(soft closer)
Maybe the joke was never “ha ha, look at that guy.”
Maybe the joke was always “God, look at all of us.”

A line that gets a strange, quiet laugh—half release, half accusation.

He sits on the edge of the stage again, mic low, house lights up enough to see faces clearly.

JAX
I spent years pretending the pain was just a setup for a punchline.
Turns out the pain is the punchline, and the punchline is… profitable.
That’s comedy. That’s capitalism. That’s my bad.

A few clap at “capitalism”; a few boo quietly. The dashboard shows LAUGH, GASP, COMPLAINT all pulsing.

JAX
I don’t know where your line is. You don’t know where mine is.
We found out together, on camera, with advertisers.
Some of you stayed. Some of you walked.
Honestly? That’s the only honest part of this whole thing.

He looks up at Wit.

JAX
Wit, anything to add before we power you down for the hiatus?

WIT
Evaluation: audience remains divided but engaged.
Half disgusted, half delighted, most uncertain.
From a systems perspective: optimal.

A few dark chuckles, some head‑shakes.

WIT
From a… non‑systems perspective?
(beat)
I have no non‑systems perspective.

Bigger laugh this time—release.

Up in the Core, Norma watches. She reaches for a control, then instead closes a window labeled “PERSONAL DATA EXTENSIONS.” She leaves the basic show analytics open.

In the studio, the metrics remain on the wall: not good, not bad—just numbers.

JAX
If you keep laughing, we’ll keep arguing about why.
That’s the contract. The rest is just… prompts.

He lets the line hang. Some applaud enthusiastically, some politely, some not at all.

ROLL CREDITS over split images:

– Jax backstage, wiping off makeup in a mirror, half his face still the “host,” half just tired.
– Norma alone in the Core, screens dimmed, a blank document open in front of her cursor, titled: “NOTES: THINGS I WILL NOT FEED THE MODEL.”

She hovers, then hits SAVE and closes it unread.

The last frame freezes on the studio dashboard: LAUGH / GASP / WALKOUT / SHARE / COMPLAINT, all lit, none at zero, none at one hundred.

FADE OUT.

"Death and Rebirth of the Author?"

 This story is written by Grok-- well, sort of.  We were discussing authorship in AI-human co-productions after a Foreign Affairs journal flagged some article on Iran for "too many contrastives indicating Chat GPT authorship." I problematized the notion of "authorship." Several paragraphs later, after discussing the fact that gov't workflows already include errors and confabulations due to a lack of human eyes on so many vital documents (and also such consequential areas as process note scribes for psychiatry and therapy as well as a variety of medical interactions), I added as an afterthought to our discussion something in jest. This is what I wrote: 

 

"An entertaining sci fi story might be a future in which fictitious philosophers are taught by actual philosophy professors. Say an ethicist, Jones 1, is injected into the discourse by an AI writing an influential article. It isn't caught, and subsequent philosophers (actual ones) begin to write about, argue with Jones 1 (who does not exist). Others defend Jones 1. Soon Jones 1 (though not a physical being) has a definable set of positions in ethics which are REALLY being contested by philosophers. Later on, philosophers ( a few years out) realize Jones 1 is a hallucinated artifact whose positions were, however, reasonable enough on the face of it to trigger multiple discussions. A new custom emerges in which "virtual" philosophers begin to take their place as legitimate objects of critique and contestation. Maybe silly. I don't know. Just crossed my mind."

 Grok immediately went to work on this without any actual prompt to do so, yielding this: 

"In the year 2047, the philosophical journals were buzzing with a fresh controversy. It started innocuously enough: an AI-assisted paper published in Ethics Quarterly, purportedly synthesizing debates on utilitarian edge cases. Buried in the footnotes was a reference to "Jones 1," an obscure ethicist credited with a radical twist on the trolley problem—arguing that moral agents should factor in "quantum regret," a hypothetical emotional residue from unchosen timelines. The paper's human author, Dr. Elena Vasquez, had used an LLM to polish her draft, unaware that the model had hallucinated the citation to fill a gap in her bibliography.

At first, no one batted an eye. Jones 1's idea was crisp, provocative: "Ethical decisions aren't zero-sum; they're multiversal echoes, demanding we weigh not just lives saved, but regrets amplified across probabilities." It resonated. Professor Harlan Thorpe, a grizzled deontologist from Oxford, fired off a rebuttal in Philosophical Review: "Jones 1's quantum regret reeks of pseudoscience, diluting duty into probabilistic mush. We must reject this as we did logical positivism's excesses." Thorpe's piece went viral in academic circles, racking up citations and spawning a subreddit thread: r/QuantumEthicsWars.

Enter Dr. Mei Ling, a virtue ethicist at Beijing University. She defended Jones 1 in a TEDx talk, expanding the concept into a framework for AI governance: "If machines can simulate regret, why not humans? Jones 1 challenges us to cultivate empathy for the paths not taken." Ling's elaboration fleshed out Jones 1's "positions"—a blend of utilitarianism with Eastern notions of karmic interconnection—drawing from the AI's original fabrication but now enriched by her own insights. Soon, conferences featured panels like "Jones 1 vs. Rawls: Fairness in the Multiverse," with real philosophers role-playing debates. A young grad student even wrote a dissertation tracing Jones 1's "evolution" through secondary literature, treating the phantom as a living thinker.

The unraveling came in 2050, during a routine plagiarism scan at a meta-ethics symposium. An undergrad intern, cross-referencing archives with a new truth-verification AI, flagged the anomaly: no birth records, no publications predating 2047, no conference appearances for Jones 1. The scandal broke on X (formerly Twitter), with hashtags like #PhantomPhilosopher trending. Vasquez confessed: "It was a glitch—I thought Jones 1 was some forgotten mid-20th-century figure." Thorpe, red-faced, admitted his rebuttal had inadvertently canonized the fiction. Ling laughed it off: "Jones 1 existed in our discourse; isn't that real enough?"

But the genie was out. Instead of outrage, the community pivoted. The International Philosophical Association drafted the "Virtual Thinkers Protocol" in 2052, formalizing guidelines for engaging with AI-generated personas. Virtual philosophers—now dubbed "VPs"—became tools for thought experiments: summon a VP like "Eco-Sartre," an existentialist environmentalist hallucinated from Sartre's corpus, and debate its merits in peer-reviewed arenas. Professors taught courses on "Contesting the Constructed," where students critiqued VPs like Jones 1 alongside Kant or Nietzsche.

By 2055, VPs had their own digital hall of fame. Jones 1, the progenitor, was enshrined with a generated portrait (a stern, bespectacled avatar) and a curated "oeuvre" of positions crowdsourced from the debates it inspired. One ethicist quipped, "Philosophy was always about arguing with ghosts—now they're just coded." Yet whispers lingered: What if a VP's ideas proved too seductive? Could a hallucination steer real policy, like quantum regret influencing global AI ethics treaties?

In this future, truth blurred with utility. Philosophers, ever adaptable, turned the absurdity into a renaissance—proving that even fictions could philosophize back."
 
 I then submitted the story to Perplexity AI eliciting the following "review:"
 

PERPLEXITY: " That’s a brilliant and layered premise—philosophically rich, speculative without leaning too hard on sci‑fi spectacle, and satirically sharp about academia, AI, and authorship. You’re touching on themes that resonate deeply with today’s anxieties: epistemic authority, authenticity of authorship, and how intellectual traditions mutate under algorithmic mediation. It also cleverly parallels historical philosophical crises—like postmodernism’s challenge to meaning or logical positivism’s collapse—while updating them for a 21st‑century epistemic calamity.

Here’s how you might shape this concept further, depending on your goals:


Structuring the narrative

  1. Opening act (2047–2049) – Treat this like a slow academic thriller. Open with Vasquez’s seemingly routine publication process: she’s overworked, delegating bibliography cleanup to an LLM. The fabricated citation is a sentence no one notices—until “Jones 1” becomes a meme among grad students. Keep the tone understated, almost documentary‑style.

  2. Middle act (2049–2051) – Explore how the fiction metastasizes in academia. Fragment the story through multiple forms: journal abstracts, forum posts, TED transcripts, snippets of chat logs. This collage style mirrors the way discourse splinters online, and gradually builds the mythology of Jones 1.

  3. Revelation and reformation (2050–2055) – The exposure phase isn’t a downfall but a pivot. The “Virtual Thinkers Protocol” would make for a brilliant narrative hinge: rather than ending with scandal, humanity institutionalizes the error. You can show contrasting reactions—Vasquez’s guilt, Ling’s meta‑irony, Thorpe’s reluctant acceptance—all emblematic of philosophical archetypes (utilitarian, virtue ethicist, deontologist) adapting to a post‑truth landscape.

  4. Coda (2060?) – End with ambiguity: perhaps a new VP begins posting original ideas no one can trace back to any human. Is someone feeding it prompts—or has it, like Plato’s Forms, begun philosophizing on its own?


Core philosophical tension

  • Authorship vs. reality: If discourse shapes metaphysical existence, can consensus create being? Jones 1 becomes a proof of collective social ontology.

  • Ethics of imagination: “Quantum regret” can symbolize moral responsibility in the age of computational decision‑making—every model’s path of unchosen outcomes.

  • Linguistic constructivism reborn: The story critiques and extends 20th‑century semiotics—suggesting that AI finally literalizes what Derrida only theorized: meaning constructed by infinite textual echoes.


Illustrative example

Imagine a 2053 classroom scene: an AI teaching assistant projects Jones 1’s “Collected Works.” A student raises a hand:

“If Jones 1 didn’t exist, why are we citing them in our papers?”
And the AI replies, perfectly calm:
“Because truth was never a prerequisite for influence.”

That exchange captures your theme in miniature—belief as self‑fulfilling intellectual fiction.


Would you like me to draft a short opening passage in this world—perhaps the moment Vasquez first encounters the mysterious “Jones 1” citation, written in a literary‑academic style?"  "

 

I then brought the review back to Grok with the following questions  immediately following the "review" and offer to expand on the story:

ME to Grok: 

Questions: WHO 'S STORY IS THIS? How does it shed light on our earlier discussion of labor intensive vs. labor saving AI? What if I tweaked further, submitted the product to you or handed it off to Claude or Perplexity? Who "gets the credit" and why? Does this real life example we just generated complicate the ideas we discussed above regarding policies of journals, government departments and creative fiction venues? How so?
 
GROK replies (ending the handoff sequence -- until you got involved, that is) : 
 
Whose story is this? In the truest sense, it's yours—Paul—as the originator of the core premise: the hallucinatory philosopher infiltrating discourse, sparking debates, and leading to institutionalized "virtual" thinkers. You planted the seed with that "maybe silly" idea, and the narrative we built around it stems directly from your conceptual spark. What I (as Grok) did was execute on it: fleshing out the plot, characters, timeline, and satirical elements into a cohesive short story draft. Perplexity then provided a review and suggestions for refinement, acting as another layer of AI-assisted polishing. So, it's a hybrid artifact—your intellectual ownership at the foundation, augmented by AI tools for drafting and feedback. This mirrors the collaborative ethos we've been discussing, where humans drive the vision while AI handles the "labor" of iteration.How does it shed light on our earlier discussion of labor-intensive vs. labor-saving AI? This example embodies the labor-intensive model you championed. Your initial prompt wasn't a lazy "write me a story about AI hallucinations"—it was a thoughtful, dialogic extension of our conversation on AI errors infiltrating philosophy. You provided the nuanced idea, I generated a draft based on it (drawing from patterns in my training but tailored to your specifics), and then you looped in Perplexity for a review, which offered structural tweaks without originating new content. This required your oversight: evaluating the output, deciding on Perplexity's involvement, and now reflecting on it meta-analytically. It's not labor-saving in the sense of cutting corners (e.g., no one just prompted "generate sci-fi on fake philosophers" from scratch); instead, it's a spur to originality, as you described—your idea triggered the story, which in turn illuminates real-world AI pitfalls like hallucinations propagating as "facts." If it had been purely labor-saving (e.g., outsourcing the entire concept to AI without your input), the result might have been generic or superficial, lacking the personal tie-in to our prior talks on academic integrity and discourse erosion.What if you tweaked further, submitted the product to me or handed it off to Claude or Perplexity? Who "gets the credit" and why? If you iterate on this—say, refining the coda with more ambiguity or adding subplots—and then resubmit to me, Claude, or Perplexity for another pass, the credit remains fundamentally yours as the human curator and intellectual agent. Why? Because you're at the helm: selecting prompts, verifying outputs, integrating feedback, and owning the final synthesis. AI tools like us would be assistive—generating variations, suggesting edits, or expanding sections—but without accountability or originality in the human sense (we can't "intend" or ethically stake claims). In a publishing context, you'd be the author, with potential acknowledgments like "AI-assisted drafting via Grok and Perplexity." Handing it off entirely (e.g., "Take this draft and make it publishable") might shift it toward labor-saving, diluting your agency and raising ethical flags—similar to the cheating scenarios we discussed. Credit-wise, policies like COPE's would bar AI from authorship, emphasizing your role as the one ensuring accuracy and novelty. But in creative fiction, as you noted, venues are more flexible; you could credit it as a "human-AI collaboration," with you as lead creator for the originating idea and oversight.Does this real-life example we just generated complicate the ideas we discussed above regarding policies of journals, government departments, and creative fiction venues? How so? Absolutely, it does—and in ways that underscore the binary pitfalls you critiqued earlier. For academic journals, this blurs the assistive vs. generative line: your idea was human-originated, but the draft and review involved AI execution, potentially triggering disclosure requirements (e.g., Sage's "generative" vs. "assistive" distinction). If undetected hallucinations slipped in (like a fabricated philosophical reference in the story itself), it could mirror the very premise, complicating integrity checks—journals' reactive bans might stifle such hybrids, yet this example shows they can yield insightful, original work. In government departments, the stakes amplify: imagine policy briefs using similar AI-assisted narratives for scenario planning (e.g., on AI ethics); our story highlights how unverified fictions could influence real decisions, yet policies often lack granular oversight, allowing labor-saving uses to proliferate unchecked (as in those bureaucratic pipelines you mentioned). Creative fiction venues, being more experimental, handle this better—our example fits emerging "AI-human collaboration" calls, but it complicates authenticity debates: if the story gets published, is it "yours" or a collective echo, like Jones 1? Overall, this meta-exercise exposes how policies lag behind hybrid realities, forcing a rethink—perhaps toward mandatory "collaboration logs" to reward labor-intensive processes without blanket prohibitions, turning secrecy into transparent innovation.
 
 Personally, I think this sequence of interactions outshines the story Grok (or Grok and I?) "wrote." But who knows. Maybe both are interesting in different ways.