Chapter 1: Strange Things Are Happening to Me
I'm going to tell you a story that changed my life forever. No, don't get the wrong idea — no heroic deeds or great discoveries. Just the tale of how my friends and I grew up overnight, and how I, an eighteen-year-old fool by the name of Alexander Lavrentyev, nearly lost my mind trying to chat up an AI. Sounds insane? Believe me, that's nothing compared to what came next.
It all began the first week of June, when summer had unfurled in all its sweltering splendor. Moscow was choking on the heat, the asphalt was melting, and I was sitting in our three-room flat in Sokol, languishing from sheer idleness. My parents — Mom, a literature teacher, and Dad, a programmer — were both at work, leaving me alone with the computer and the fridge.
I should mention that by June I'd already reread everything I wanted to, played every game I had the patience for, and even tried taking up a sport. Tried and quit after two days — too hot, too lazy, too boring. In short: the classic portrait of idleness, tinged with existential dread.
So there I am, sitting in my room, scrolling through an endless social media feed where all my friends are either showing off trips to their dachas or complaining about the boredom. The fan drones like a helicopter, but it's about as useful as a chocolate teapot. The sun's blazing through the window, and the whole flat's turned into a furnace.
"Damn," I muttered, leaning back in my chair. "I don't even feel like reading."
Now that was a warning sign. Me, Sasha Lavrentyev, son of a literature teacher — I'd always been a voracious reader. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Borges — anything, as long as it was interesting. But in that June heatwave, even my favorite authors felt dull.
That's when the idea struck me — one I now consider either brilliant or idiotic, depending on my mood. Namely: what if I tried messing around with these new language models? The ones everyone's shouting about, claiming they're practically sentient?
You see, Dad was always going on at dinner about the AI revolution. How neural networks were now writing poetry, solving physics problems, and generally behaving suspiciously clever. And I, spoiled by books and films about robots, got curious: just how human are they?
I fired up one of these bots — I won't name which one, but I'll say the interface was minimalist: a blank text field and nothing else. The name spoke for itself — LOGOS. Dignified. Ancient Greek.
At first I asked the usual questions. Weather, news, film recommendations. his answers were reasonable enough, but painfully polite. Polite, constructive, without a single living intonation. Deadly boring.
