Because some topics are just too spicy for AI.
What Happened
The Verge reported on OpenAI’s discussions, noting that the AI company is talking about not talking about certain topics, including specifically mentioning ‘goblins.’ This highlights the challenges and considerations AI developers face in controlling generated content and establishing guardrails for their models.
Our Take
Alright, folks, gather ’round, because today we’re delving into the truly absurd. Forget geopolitics, forget inflation, forget whether your toaster is secretly judging your breakfast choices. We’re talking about something far more existential, far more baffling, and frankly, far more hilarious: OpenAI talking about *not* talking about goblins.
Yes, you heard that right. Not dragons, not trolls, not even those weird little dust bunnies that gather under your couch. Goblins. This isn’t some Dungeons & Dragons session gone awry, this is a major tech company, a beacon of artificial intelligence, apparently having to address the elephant in the server room, which, in this case, is a tiny, green, potentially mischievous humanoid creature.
I can just imagine the board meeting. ‘Good morning, esteemed colleagues. Our quarterly profits are up, our new language model is predicting the future with 98% accuracy, and we’ve successfully optimized the delivery of cat videos worldwide. However, we need to discuss a burgeoning issue.’ *Dramatic pause.* ‘Goblins.’
Someone probably piped up, ‘But sir, our internal memo clearly stated: ‘Zero Goblin Tolerance.’ Did we not iterate enough on that? Was the font not aggressive enough on the ‘NO GOBLINS’ directive?’ You can picture the PowerPoint slides: ‘Goblins: Friend or Foe? (Spoiler: Foe, especially if they try to unionize the Roomba fleet).’ ‘Best Practices for Avoiding Goblin-Related AI Hallucinations.’ ‘Emergency Protocol for a 3-Goblin Maximum in Any Given Text Prompt.’
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What prompted this? Did one of the AI models start writing epic poems about goblin lore? Did a chatbot accidentally suggest a user invest in a goblin futures market? Perhaps a language model, in its infinite wisdom, deduced that the most efficient way to achieve global peace was to simply *ignore* all talk of goblins, hoping they’d just, you know, evaporate back into the shadows from whence they came? Or maybe, just maybe, an AI generated a truly terrifying image of a goblin wearing a tiny, ill-fitting CEO suit, and it was just too real.
The sheer absurdity of it is what gets me. We’re talking about the cutting edge of technology, machines designed to solve the world’s most complex problems, and they’ve got to put a lid on the goblin chatter. It’s like a genius quantum physicist suddenly having to explain why you shouldn’t feed microwave popcorn to your pet hamster. Essential, perhaps, but deeply, deeply comical.
So next time you’re feeling overwhelmed by the complexities of modern life, just remember: somewhere, an AI is diligently, painstakingly, and probably with a slight existential whirring, trying very, very hard not to talk about goblins. And for that, I think we owe them a silent, goblin-free round of applause.
💬 “ABSOLUTELY NO GOBLINS!” — 💬 “But… the data points!”
Inspired by: OpenAI talks about not talking about goblins – The Verge
