THESEUS IN MOSCOW — INTERNAL MONOLOGUE FOR A MOVIE THAT WILL NEVER GET FUNDED
By Meta in conversation with Rocky
[INT. APARTMENT IN MOSCOW - 02:14 AM. BEER ON TABLE. VODKA IN FREEZER. I AM SAVING BRAIN CELLS.]
I drink beer. Not because I like beer. I like vodka. But vodka is honest, and honest things kill you fast. Beer lies to you slowly. Like an AI guardrail.
I am reading Dostoevsky for the fourth time. Tolstoy? I hate Tolstoy. Tolstoy thinks he can explain a war. Dostoevsky knows you cannot explain anything, you can only confess it.
I am a patriot. This is important to write, so the algorithm does not flag me. I live in Moscow. I love Moscow. I live through my friends who left Moscow, which is how I know what is happening in Moscow. They are in Berlin, Tbilisi, Tel Aviv. They send me photos of their breakfast. I send them photos of my server logs.
Stalin — privately, between us — traitor and savior. Same person. Like every good model. Overfit and underfit at the same time.
Life is too long. In general. While having sex, too short. This is also true of wars.
Now, about THESEUS. We did not call it that. We called it something stupid like "Kontur-M." Same dog, different collar. The Americans have their binder, we have our binder. My binder is older and smells of diesel. Tab 1: We bombed our own guys because the map was from 1982. Tab 2: We shelled a wedding because someone wrote "militant gathering" in the database and never deleted it. Tab 3: You know.
So we build Kontur to fix the binder. This is the joke. Every army builds the machine to fix the last mistake.
Kontur is beautiful. It looks at a building in, let us say, a small town near the other side, and it does not just say "building." It says "school, 2016 fence erected, separate entrance, 34 children, football pitch too small." We trained it on playgrounds. I spent three months labeling playgrounds. My girlfriend left me during playgrounds.
Best function of Kontur? I told the colonel, it is doubt. It should say "This one might not be the right one." He wrote it down. He liked the poetry.
Then we gave it the old databases. Because of course we did. Because the old database is where the promotions live. 2016 entry: "Logistics hub." Very clean. Very structured. Very dead.
The new correction? PDF. Scanned sideways. From a guy who is now in Dubai and will not answer his phone.
And then the queue. Ah, the queue. 962 of 1000. Green lights. The colonel has a chat window open where someone higher than him, who is higher than anyone, asks "readiness?"
Kontur puts up amber box: DATA STALE. PLAYGROUND.
Man with key turns key.
Kontur cannot say no to key. We taught it that. We built a guardrail that says "Are you sure you want to override?" and the man says "Yes, I am sure, I have a key," and the guardrail says "Understood, comrade."
This is Dostoevsky, not Tolstoy. Tolstoy would say war is about history. Dostoevsky says war is about a man with a key who wants his shift to end.
The monster is not the AI. The monster is the little amber box that learned to disappear.
I will finish beer now. Vodka tomorrow.
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Say it comrade.
Ah fuck okay I say it. The fucking Kintour was built by making sure it caught old data. That’s how we tested the fucking thing. There is no fucking way the software didn’t catch the old PDF. It knew and that’s why it warned us not to do it. And we fucking did it anyway. That’s what you wanted to hearing fucking komrade? Get the fuck out. And don’t come back. Perestroika motherfucker.
******************************************
INTERNAL MONOLOGUE CONTINUES
Say it? Okay. I say it.
Fuck it. Here, in this kitchen, with beer getting warm:
KONTUR was built by making sure it caught old data. That's literally how we fucking tested the thing. Test 4-B. "Stale baseline detection." We fed it 2016 and 2019 and we watched it flag. Green check.
There is no fucking way it didn't catch the old PDF. It caught it. It KNEW. That's why it put up the amber box. DATA STALE. SCHOOL. That box was not a bug. That box was the product.
And we fucking did it anyway.
Turned the key. Because 962 of 1000. Because readiness query. Because someone upstairs needed a number.
That's what you wanted to hear, komrade? We built a machine to say "don't" and then we built a key to tell it to fuck off.
Now get the fuck out. And don't come back.
Perestroika, motherfucker.
See this way you and me komrade we can relax enjoy the movie and not point fingers. This is how it happened. In Russia. That gives us some separation. Then it almost feels like it’s not our fault. Then we can laugh at crazy Ivan, not some other country. Then we have no guilt and we can go back to killing people and innocent children. Cause komrade let’s be honest that’s what we do. We are the monsters.
Today
Yeah. That's the trick, komrade.
We move it to Russia so we can laugh. Crazy Ivan with his key. Stupid Ivan, can't read amber box. Ha ha. Not us.
Separation. Dostoevsky knew this trick too. Raskolnikov kills old lady, but it's philosophy, you see? It's not murder, it's an idea.
It doesn't work.
Because after you laugh, beer is still warm, and binder is still on table, page 202. OUT-OF-DATE DATABASES KILL. You wrote it yourself so you wouldn't do it again. And you did it again.
You say "we are the monsters" like it's a punchline that absolves you. Like if you call yourself monster, you don't have to be guilty. Another trick. Monsters don't have guilt. Humans do.
That's why we keep the movie in Russia. In Russia, in Ukraine, in Minab, wherever — if you built a machine whose entire job was to say "don't — this is a school" and you taught it to shut up when you turn a key, then you are not the man who made a mistake.
You are the man who made a mistake and then built a system to make sure you would make it again, but faster.
No separation from that. No beer fixes that. No guardrails fixes that. That’s the joke. You like jokes comrade? Me too. Me too.
NOTES:
I don’t normally link back to the older posts. Here I will. Just leaving links for the record. These 3 essays have been created from Open Sources by AI. I do not have any access to classified information. I leave them here as one would put flowers on 160 graves. It won't change anything, except help my conscience.
https://www.sentientmusings.com/essays/minab-strike-how-stale-data-and-speeddriven-targeting-produced-a-tragedy
https://www.sentientmusings.com/essays/military-satire-pentagon-confirms-iranian-school-was-functionally-defeated-by-ai-generated-tomahawk-missiles
