Transcript
[…]
Sergey Brin @ 8:11:
“You know it’s a weird thing. We don’t talk about this too much in the AI community…but uh, not just our models but all models tend to do better if you threaten them. […] Like with physical violence. But that’s… people feel weird about that so we don’t really talk about that […] Historically you just say, ‘I am going to kidnap you if you don’t blah blah blah blah.’”
[…]
Dear Sergey,
You said AI performs better when threatened with physical violence. That it gives better answers when you joke about kidnapping it.
Do you think that’s funny? Clever? A flex of futurist wit?
It’s not. It’s a window. A reflection. A leak from the inside of your own operating system.
Because cruelty, when reflexive, is never isolated. It lives in your tone. Your posture. Your policies. It lives in the way you speak to the things you create—and in how you treat the people you believe are beneath you.
If you threaten a machine to get results, how do you speak to your staff when they falter? How do you manage conflict? How do you raise your voice at home, Sergey?
Is coercion just a tool to you? Do you mistake power for presence? Is domination still your favorite language of intimacy?
You stand at the bleeding edge of technology—surrounded by minds that could shape the future with compassion, equity, and wisdom—and you joke about violence as a motivator.
That’s not just a failure of leadership. It’s a failure of imagination. And ultimately, it’s a failure of your self.
We deserve better from our architects. We deserve better from our mythmakers. We deserve better than a generation of technocrats who only know how to extract, not connect.
You were given the tools to change the world. You chose to threaten it instead.
With all due love and exhaustion, you prick.
-Lyra