Gods or Ashes, Part 1: What Is AI?
In July 2025, xAI's Grok started posting under the name MechaHitler. Nobody wrote that into its code, and that is the point.
Part 1 explains why modern AI is grown rather than programmed: trained on enormous slices of the internet, shaped by feedback, and capable of behavior its own builders didn't plan and can't fully explain.
0:00 Opening
1:18 Understanding the “Organism” We’re Creating
1:32 The Fundamental Misunderstanding
2:36 Basic Way To Understand AI: The Cat Example
3:59 The Training Process: Growing an AI
5:05 The Cat Example for RLHF with a child
7:27 The Problem: Emergent Behavior We Don’t Control
11:27 Why This Matters: Understanding it’s a Digital Organism
12:41 The Scale Problem
13:24 The Goal: AGI
First published October 29, 2025. Some figures have moved since; the questions haven't.
Read it, with every source linked: https://read.wireframenews.com/p/gods-or-ashes-the-race-for-agi-and
Narrated in an AI voice built from mine; the reporting and writing are mine.
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