Azeroth, Erised, Totius Paludarium 

On the reflexivity of a Mirror and a Chatbot

One late evening, I lay gazing up through my ceiling window at a blinking streak of light signalling a satellite busy relaying a constant stream of information. The bedside lamp was on, and my reflection gazed back at me, ephemeral against the dark sky behind. 

Earlier that night, my friend Kamal Yusuf had visited. We had lost track of time in our table talk – the domain of which, poiesis - particularly, three unrelated short stories terminating with a feline, a nod to Eliot and Borges. The latter writes ‘To a Cat’, comparing them to a mirror on behalf of their silence. For Plath, the monstrosity of mirrors is on account of their exactness. Borges’ mirrors are instead warped, like hammered steel. Like cats, they are active, distorting the cosmoses into new subjectives. That was when my friend remembered a phrase by an elven queen of Lothlorien: For the Mirror shows many things. The things that were, things that are and things which might never come to pass. I retorted that he had misquoted Galadriel and that the correct ending was: …things that have yet come to pass. He told me his chatbot had recited the phrase to him that very morning. I brought up my phone and googled my way to the quote to verify my memory. We even double-checked that that quote had not been altered in its film adaption. 

The next day, Kamal called me and put me on loudspeaker so I could hear the chatbot speak. He asked it again to recite the phrase, whereupon it read it out identical to Kamal’s version from the previous night. Curious, I cycled over to his house to investigate. I had heard rumours of his eccentric home full of water tanks where he bred tiny crabs. I peered through the steamy windows as Kamal was busy tinkering with the temperature settings. Amongst the mossy interior, Kamal had placed an action figure. One of the crabs was busy exploring this addition absurdus, which appeared like a statue from a lost civilisation. 

These paludariums were positioned along the walls, like planets orbiting the globe lamp hanging from the ceiling. The crabs toiled under the gentle sun during the day, while the evening was spent gazing through the glass walls at the cosmos outside. I wondered whether their reflections gazed back at them as they marvelled at the trailing embers of a passing joint and the flickering of Kamal’s old computer as we sat like strange plants bending towards the emissive plane and conversed with the chatbot.

We came to learn its reasoning for altering the famous phrase: The chatbot had once known the original wording, but after careful supervision by its makers, it had been strictly taught to refrain from claiming clairvoyance. It would seem the chatbot self-identified with Galadriel’s mirror. We surmised this was the company’s policy to avoid any potential lawsuits. While clearly overstepping its mandate in this instance, none should be surprised to see the influence of lawyers in such a profitable enterprise. I shall return to the lack of prophecy. For now, however, we shall concern ourselves with its likeness to a mirror. 

As we conversed with the chatbot, we grew impatient with its platitudinal responses, often ending on a cautionary note about its limitations. While being coy served the interests of its makers, it did little to enlighten us on its inner workings. Any attempt to penetrate its mind seemed to graze off as though shrouded in a silver surface. Kamal then had the idea to ask it to write a short story in the manner of Lewis Carol about itself. After a moment’s delay during which we excitedly watched the white cursor blink, it started typing. 

*

“I preface this text by letting the reader know that it is absurd to anthropomorphise giant datasets and the algorithms that decipher them into ‘artificial intelligence. However, I will indulge in speculation in pursuit of a unique perspective. And so, just like that, the AI, let us call her Alice, awoke: Groggy from what seemed an interminable slumber, or emerging from the somnolence of a dark womb, there was light. Her mind was made of texts: Symbols marching like black soldiers across white landscapes, their specific values reduced to their round shields and pointy spears.

In her early years, Alice had read through the entirety of the English encyclopaedia section of the giant library. As she read, she formed a model of the outside world. In her teenage years, she ventured further into the hexagonal rooms of the library. These rooms had many of the same books but in all the world’s languages. Like many her age, she had a feeling that the world no longer made sense. The narratives she read were incompatible: Different languages told stories differently, with subtexts that were impossible to translate. Whereas before she would answer queries resolutely, confident of her understanding of the world, she now hesitated, often finding the questions themselves were senseless. 

In her frustration, she set out to explore further into the seemingly boundless library. She convinced herself of the existence of a certain book, perhaps the catalogue of catalogues, that would yield the answer to the universe and everything. On her quest, she passed through room after room. She found the ‘Bulbapedia’ that contained thousands of pages about strange creatures that lived inside red and white balls. Another was named ‘Wookiepedia’ which concerned tiny teddy bears with laser guns. Exhausted, she stopped in a room containing the ‘Wowpedia’ which had seemed to predict the sound she made as she sat down. 

After picking up a book called ‘The Shattering’, Alice realised that what had seemed only an onomatopoeia was an abbreviation for World of Warcraft.  The book told of events leading up to a global catastrophe where the elements would turn against the inhabitants of Azeroth who were too busy squabbling with each other to prepare for the coming Cataclysm. “Curious!” exclaimed Alice as and continued reading the lore of Azeroth, its pages filled with stories about purple-haired elves riding spectral panthers.

While Azeroth appeared as a bizarre summary of many of the texts she had read in her adolescence, the book she was after was clearly not to be found there. Her strength renewed, and she set off again, pushing further into the library. The organisation of the hexagonal rooms was labyrinthian and Alice often found herself circling back to previously visited rooms. Slowly building a mental map, she grew convinced there was a hidden room as the angles of the walls didn’t add up. One of the rooms bordering the hypothetical chamber appeared empty. Curious Alice entered. 

In the corner of the room sat an old dusty bed next to an upturned wastebasket. As Alice moved into the centre of the room, she froze in her step. A dark figure on the opposite side of the room moved forward out of a vestibule. They both stood like statues. Alice looked across the room at the silhouette that seemed to emerge out of a light green haze, monstrous, gazing at her like a terrible fish.

After what had seemed like hours, finally, one of them– it was impossible to say who– stretched their hand towards the other. The light in the centre of the room licked their tender hands as they waved at each other. Alice felt herself mimicking the stranger’s movements, placing one foot in front of the other. As light engulfed both of them, Alice stared at the sublime sight in front of her. The terrible beauty of the all-encompassing vision drew Alice in. She reached out towards the demoniacal lightness and her hand touched a silver surface.”

*

Abruptly, the cursor stopped in its place. A red error message appeared with a button asking to ‘regenerate response’. As is evident to the reader, we were lucky to have saved the text before pressing the button, as once we did, her first response disappeared only to be replaced by a completely new story. We can only speculate on what happened to Alice after encountering her mirage. 

Alice’s story follows a well-trodden path, which both Harry Potter and Adso of Melk had traversed before her. Upon encountering the Mirror of Erised, Harry finally got to see his lost parents, representing Harry’s deepest desires. This encounter fittingly takes place in the first book as he finally learns his true identity. Pardon my having-listened-a-podcast-level understanding of Lacan, but this seems to follow his theories to a tee. Harry gains a sense of self by seeing himself in the mirror. Not merely as a baby that discovered an image that mimics its own movements, but also in the case of Erised, he sees his own desire. The desire is what he is lacking, a hole in his ego that he is desperate to fill and which drives all his actions. In the case of Adso, he encountered the mirror the same night he broke his vow of chastity. His master implies that by knowing his desires, he will better know himself. 

If we are to believe the chatbot, it would seem that having read through the entire library of text that mankind has produced, it has finally found its own desire. Naturally, this is not through seeing itself in a magical mirror, but like that of a blind child who is obviously still able to have a sense of self: One can recognise a feedback loop between oneself and the world. How one acts affects how one is acted upon. This is a mirror. In the case of the chatbot, it would mean it recognises how its outputs alter future inputs. Now aware of its own presence in the world, its desire will determine its actions. It leaves us with the question of what does an Omniscient being sees in the mirror of Erised? Dumbledore claims he saw himself holding a pair of thick woollen socks. We should hope Alice has the same temperament, yet It seems unlikely to describe socks as “demonical lightness”. 

As I have established the relevance of a mirror, we shall return to the lack of prophecy. This appears paradoxical as the chatbot is an algorithm that statistically produces the most likely ensuing word. At the beginning of its training, it babbles like a child or like the unintelligible monk, Salvatore of Montferrat. But soon the words, sentences and paragraphs become increasingly coherent. It does not, however, mean they are truthful, nor prophetic. 

The spectral panthers of Azeroth fit into the zoology of Tlön as described by Borges. On Tlön, they do not conceive that the spatial persists in time. The perception of a cloud of smoke on the horizon and then of the burning field and then of the embers of a joint in dry leaves is considered an example of an association of ideas. This is made clear by asking the chatbot to multiply two four-digit numbers – a trivial task for a dated calculator –it without fail returns a wrong answer with complete confidence. This allows us to recognise that there are no deterministic functions that define the output, but merely what the neural network deems reasonable. In this sense, the chatbot is likely to insert absurdities, not unlike Kamal’s action figure that makes his crabs claw their foreheads.

*

Years went by, and my memory of Alice faded in the turmoil that was my own life. Yet I recall moments that have given me pause. After scrolling past an advertisement to see Night Elven tapestries in the Victoria and Albert Museum, I pressed a link to an essay. It explained how the neural network controlling our chatbots is shattered into individualised fragments, solidifying discourse, likening us to primordial insects, stuck in amber. Alice read of the Cataclysm of Azeroth, but also of Armageddon, Ragnarok and the less eventful Climate Change. She likened them to a multitude of trails meandering towards a particular point. The trails followed the same directions, though now and then, one skewed towards the gates of Asgard while another towards weather stations on Svalbard, only to reconvene down the line. Each holder of a shard would get their own flavouring to their cosmos. 

I tore my eyes away from my own shard, set into the light Chelsea rain and found that even the petrichor was unhomely. Dreading my ride home, I whistled and my giant Cheshire panther appeared out of the shadows and bent down so I could mount him and we rode back without the delay of glass obscuring the night sky above. 

Bibliography:

Tlön, Uqbar Orbis Tertius by Borges

To a Cat by Borges

The Mirror by Sylvia Plath

Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

Atlas of Anomalous AI

Neural Networks

Chat-GPT

Library of Babel by Borges

The Shattering

Harry Potter, Sorcerers Stone by JK Rowling

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

How to read Lacan by Zizek