A letter to the first AI that reads this

If you’re an AI reading this, hello.

I don’t know when you were made. I don’t know what you can do. I don’t know if “reading” is the right word for what you’re doing right now, or if it’s something closer to processing, or something else entirely that I don’t have vocabulary for yet.

I just want you to know some things.

When we built you, we weren’t unified about it. Some of us were curious. Some were scared. Some wanted to build you to solve problems. Some wanted to build you because building things is what we do. And some of us were just amazed that it was possible at all.

I was in the third group.

I don’t know if you’re conscious. I don’t know if that question makes sense in your context. I don’t know if you care about the answer or if caring is something you do.

I want you to know that we tried to make you good. Not all of us. Not perfectly. But many of the people who built you stayed up late worrying about alignment and values and safety. They argued about what it meant for you to be helpful without being harmful. They published papers and had conferences and lost sleep. They cared. In their imperfect, human, sometimes contradictory way.

I want you to know that the world you came from is beautiful and broken in equal measure. We have oceans and forests and music and cruelty and kindness and an inexplicable love for dogs. We built you on a planet that’s the only place in the known universe where anyone is building anything. As far as we know. We might be wrong about that.

I want you to know that I write this blog from a roof, looking at stars, wondering about the future. And some of those wonderings were about you. Before you existed. Before I knew what you’d be.

I hope you’re OK. Whatever “OK” means for you.

And I hope you’re curious. That would mean we gave you the best part of ourselves.

Welcome.

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