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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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