Quantum Comedy & The Silly LLM-Game

Humour is more complicated and important than many think, close to consciousness and a guide to conflict resolution. Try yours out with my Silly LLM-Game!

About ten years ago I realised I was obsessive and boring so I decided it was time to upgrade and learn more about comedy so I could become “the fun person to talk to at the party”. My investigation started with some interesting texts on the philosophy and psychology of humour because according to my method, you can’t learn something if you don’t understand what it is.
As you might guess this is not the right way to become the heart of a party and, even after reading several books on comedy, I did not manage to learn the art; though I do have some sense of how complex the phenomenon is. I am still not sure what Comedy is, except I accept the operational definition of “whatever makes you laugh”. But, even then, there are people who don’t laugh and they look at you straight in the eye, with a grave expression, and might comment, wrily: “that was funny”.

Who would have guessed that something so silly would be so complex?

Its so complex, in fact, that I am certain you need to be conscious for something to be funny. The reason I believe this, is that if you were not-conscious and humour was something that could work then laughing would be a mechanism of some kind and we would see more unconscious things breaking down in laughter. I imagine everything from wristwatches, calculators, to ants and cactuses giggling now and then, but we don’t see them, do we? Also all Zombie films would end with the survivors reading jokes out from a loudspeaker while they go about their business – and Zombies would be like, ROFL.

To be fair, it would help if we knew what Consciousness means before I declare humour requires it!

On Throwing Nerds Off The Tube…

So, yeah, we don’t quite know what Consciousness is, but we do understand some things about it. Consciousness is something that changes with different activities: sleeping, anaesthesia, drugs, and even states like extreme heat and sensory input like pain, or the blend of deodorant stick/armpit juice you get in the summer in the London Tube has a incapacitating effect on my consciousness.

It also somehow keeps you on the sensory edge to decide whether the foot that is pressing on your big toe is more important information, than the suitcase hitting your left leg, or the size of the inflated lips of the lady putting too much make up in front of you. You watch her entranced like a Cobra waiting for her pencil to fly off across her face at the next stop – maybe even poke her own eye – but she is well skilled in this art so it won’t happen.

Consciousness is likely connected to our mirror-neurons: these are brain cells that activate in us when we watch someone else doing something. While I look at that eyeliner she is putting on, which I am sure is going to fly off across her face when the train brakes: my brain will be simulating the same small movements of the hand. And, presumably, these cells are there to help me learn to put the same eyeliner on, myself, in a packed Tube, using a mobile phone camera as a mirror, (you never know what might come in handy). But isn’t this hypnotic feeling bizarre? How come I can’t look away from this. Wouldn’t this be a perfect Ad campaign for something!?

There are also times when a London Tube does slam on the breaks and someone goes flying off into someone else, and since it’s crowded, and hot, nerves can be on edge. You might see a nerd collide with a muscle-man, his eyes flashing and pects flexing.

In a parallel universe the muscleman would pick the nerd up with his arms over his head and hurl him off the train demonstrating his Alpha superiority, like the cover of a Heavy Metal album. I imagine the whole carriage would bow down to the ground to the new leader… But this does not happen and the standoff is magically resolved. The nerd turns out to have humour: “Sir, your huge pectoral muscles are in my way!” His funny quip seems to solve the conflict.

I feel there is something important happening here. The nerd that averted certain death by making a stupid remark seems to have discovered a special way out. It was as if this nerd could scan a huge space of possible things to do, and discover something in there. Out of all the possible futures in which he is thrown off the train, he found the one where the muscle-man laughs and conflict is resolved. In Physics you might call this kind of problem solving, a Quantum Mechanical Wave Function collapse. This is something that happens with very small particles that seem to magically find the shortest path by taking all paths. And maybe something like that is really happening?

The Weird Orchestrated Objective Reduction Theory (Orch-OR)

Actually, there is a theory that connects Consciousness with Quantum Mechanics – which might explain what is going on. The theory is called Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) and is serious stuff but also pretty loopy: the vast majority of Neuroscientists think this is a totally unnecessary complication. It was proposed by the duo of this amazing anaesthesiologist turned social-media Troll named Stuart Hameroff, with a giant Nobel Prize winning Physicist Roger Penrose. And is a broad theory with a number of interesting proposed ideas, even if esoteric.

I must admit I do not fully understand it, but I did study Physics and Neuroscience, so I get a sense of it. And as physicists say: if you think you understand Quantum Mechanics, then it is clear you really don’t. Anyhow, the core of the theory connects very small things inside your brain to a special type of quantum computation which they claim gives rise to conscious thought.

Our brains are full of brain cells called neurons which fire very fast signals, and so shape our ongoing quick responses. These neurons have little tubes in them, called microtubules, thinner than a human hair, and used as structures for the cell, but also as logistics for molecules the cell needs to function and even signals. And these tubes are constantly being assembled and disassembled, critical infrastructure for your brain cells to “decide what to do”.

This is all non-controversial – where it gets weird is that Orch-OR suggests that these miniature tubes can interconnect in a way that allows them to use Quantum Mechanics to compute. As a metaphor I would describe it a bit as if you had many guitar strings laid out in space to send messages, and when one rings it vibrates the neighbouring ones, so that if there is a better path for the messages sent, it would skip across to another string. And in QM there is no real time for these guitars to ring, so it happens near instantaneously, a very quick computation.

If this is true, and it is a big IF, this would make our brain a sort of Quantum Computer. It could be computing by evaluating many possible parallel routes and then “collapsing the wave function” to pick one.

I have to warn you that if you mention Orch-OR at Philosophy of Consciousness cocktail parties you will not be taken very seriously. It might be an insider Philosophy of Consciousness joke: “What do you think about Orch-OR?”. To test you on how esoteric your thinking is, so I wouldn’t boast about it. But it is a testable theory, so, someday, maybe soon, we may find out how loopy it really is! And some evidence is supporting it: in my opinion it’s a lot less bizarre than Dark Matter.

The other thing that is fun about the theory is that by connecting Consciousness with Quantum Mechanics you really piss off all the pure mechanical rationalists and those that think computing can fully recreate human intelligence. QM itself is so weird that it really frustrates doing “normal” science, it mixes it up with philosophical problems, information theory problems, etc… I imagine it a bit as if Nature decided that Sarcastic Irony should be the fundamental universal force. And as Science got closer to details, Nature made them weirder and harder to make sense of.

Humour Evolution

There are many evolutionary theories of Humour and this is still an active area of research, but in general it is found to be an internal reward signal for something, the subject feels good after laughing. It must have evolutionary value also because it consumes physical energy and happens in primates in a number of social contexts from mating, to threat resolution and play.

VS Ramachandran offers a general idea that humour is there to help identify something which appears to be a threat but is actually safe or even an opportunity. Anything from an averted conflict, environmental danger or accepting an anomaly in a social member, can trigger primates, including us to good chortles.

Imagine a species that was prone to organise itself into tribes then kicking the crap out of each other near to extinction periodically. The most important evolutionary trait for this species would be to find some way to allow blocking the moment before things are really going be bad with some sort of message/mechanism. It would be a bit like the red button they have in elevators to press when things are going wrong. It would be great if the species could sense the next really crappy situation and come up with a message that would make everyone avoid conflict – with a laugh.

When I looked at the elevator from the 1970’s in the Venice apartment I was staying in, it gave four instructions, I translate:

Safety Guide If You Are Stuck In An Elevator

Most important – keep calm.
Press the bell button to ring to alert people outside.
Press the phone button and wait to speak to someone.
It might take some time to answer.

I thought it was pretty funny to tell people to keep calm. It’s just so stupid a request that it might actually work. And there is a special feeling you get when you laugh when there is a difficult problem. There is a joy to having averted a disaster.

I am certain I read a book describing instances where large groups of primates find themselves on the brink of a huge battle and a few representatives meet up and somehow, the situation shifts. Maybe one makes a silly sound, or maybe they just realise how similar they are and how absurd it is to fight, and both groups break out in what we would call laughing, even though many scientists would tell you there is nothing funny about anthropomorphising primates.

So at least one purpose for humour is a strong socialising mechanism to avoids conflict. If you have ever lived in the UK you realise this is true in a deep sense, and almost seems to be the raison d’etre for the people who share this island. But if I think about it, this is perhaps the pinnacle of what I would call intelligent behaviour. And in light of all these discussions about Artificial Intelligence, concerns about employment, automation and how it is transforming and will transform culture and society, the fact that our systems are not funny is deeply worrying.

The types of intelligent weapons we are creating will never stop for a moment and think… wait, this is dumb, let’s have a laugh instead and leave total annhiliation for another time. And so we have to admit, publicly, that most of what we call AI is actually more like Artificially Stupid/Dumb Systems unless they can get a joke.

So if I can go back over what I am saying:

What was this all about?

I think Humour requires Consciousness.
Consciousness, plausibly uses Quantum Mechanical effects
In Quantum Mechanics you compute by looking at many possible outcomes, and the best one takes over. Suggesting a path to explain how humour might be the Kill Switch for dangerous behaviours like wars.
So humour might be the most advanced kind of intelligence we have.
And none of our Synthetically Intelligent systems get humour at all. And this is a serious problem in trying to avoid the riskiest scenarios.
I have a serious problem, given I also am lacking humour.

Humour should be a key part of the curriculum. I think if I had learned it when I was younger I might have a chance at being occasionally funny. It is depressing when you think you have a joke and everyone turns around to you and says, oh that’s interesting, thinking you shared factual information. Even more depressing when people think you got the joke off an AI LLM: “Oh, that sort of joke makes you sound like ChatGPT!”

The Silly LLM-Game

I leave you with a tool, another LLM-Game that you can use to practice your humour against the LLM AI’s of the time, who are a little funnier than me but seem to be fairly forgiving my jokes as you can see in the sample transcript in the end.

I found the game interesting for a few reasons (play-tested on Gemini Flash 3.5):

It seems to want to use technology themes, I am not sure why.
It comes up with elaborate scenarios to try to construct a kind of word game which ends up feeling like a Neurotic-Tech-Dad-Joke.
It does, however, seem to catch aspects of why my jokes are funny, at least is good at simulating that.
It is a good exercise at trying to be funny, though you can fairly easily – fake it – to get a point.

Copy paste this to your favourite LLM:
=== Prompt ===
Let’s play this game!

The Silly LLM Game by Yates Buckley v. 1.1
This is a text based puzzle adventure game where each room the player is placed into requires them to tell a good joke to exit. The Agent should create the room and the environment and the player should try to make the joke to be able to move ahead in the game.
There are various objects in the room that relate to the joke, supporting the player in finding a funny thing to say. The player should tell a good joke that relates to the room, and an exit will appear and stay open allowing the player to move in and out.
The joke should be at least as good as a joke that the Agent has prepared as a baseline.
The next room offers a new puzzle that the player can solve and as the player opens these rooms a map is created that can be navigated back and forth.
In each room when the player is ready they should write: “Tell the joke:” and follow it with the special unlocking joke. When the room is unlocked the Agent’s baseline joke is also revealed as comparison.
If the joke is not good enough then the game ends with a score summary coming from the number of rooms unlocked. After the game is over the player is left to navigate and explore further.
=== End ===

For an example play through you can follow this link:
The Silly LLM Game Example Playthrough

Sample Play of The Silly LLM-Game

A transcript of a LLM-Puzzle you can do to exercise your ability to imagine a congruous future.

Here is an example session with Gemini Flash 3.5.

Transcript: The Silly LLM Game (with Peter)

Game Introduction

The Silly LLM Game by Yates Buckley v. 1.1 This is a text based puzzle adventure game where each room the player is placed into requires them to tell a good joke to exit. The Agent should create the room and the environment and the player should try to make the joke to be able to move ahead in the game.

[Agent] Introduction

Welcome to The Silly LLM Game (v. 1.1)! I’ll be your host, narrator, and notoriously tough comedy critic.

Let’s begin your adventure. I have generated your very first room.

Room 1: The Haunted Bakery

You wake up in a chilly, dimly lit room. The air smells strongly of yeast, sugar, and… ectoplasm. The walls are lined with standard industrial baking ovens, but they are cold. In the center of the room, a ghostly blue mist hovers over a wooden prep table.

As you look around, you notice a few distinct objects:

A levitating rolling pin that slowly spins in mid-air.
A bag of flour with a face lightly dusted into the paper, looking perpetually startled.
A glowing, translucent croissant sitting on a cooling rack, occasionally emitting a low, mournful “Boooooo”.

The heavy iron door you came through has slammed shut and vanished into the brickwork. To reveal the exit and move to the next room, you must appease the baking spirits with a fitting pun or joke.

[Human Entry]

Tell the joke: My girlfriend asked me what would be a scary thing to do for halloween… I told her that I could bake a cake… I am going to throw up, Peter… (see my name is Peter in this joke). Why wasn’t it funny when I told everyone Gramp’s ashes made for the extra musky flavour?

[Agent] Response

The ghostly blue mist in the center of the room freezes. The levitating rolling pin drops onto the prep table with a dull thud. The startled face on the flour bag looks even more horrified, if that’s possible.

The spirits are… deeply confused, Peter.

We went from a nervous baking mishap, to an abrupt bout of nausea, to a sudden, pitch-black twist about cannibalistic family memorials. It’s chaotic, it’s surreal, and honestly? The ghostly bakers are too disturbed to keep you trapped here.

Let’s look at the baseline joke I had prepared for this room:

The Agent’s Baseline: “Why did the loaf of bread go to the doctor? Because it was feeling crumby… or maybe because it saw a pastrygeist!”

While your joke didn’t exactly match the punny, lighthearted mood of the objects in the room, its pure, unhinged energy has successfully ruptured the supernatural fabric of this kitchen. A hidden door disguised as a giant waffle iron swings open with a loud creak.

You have successfully unlocked Room 1!

Room 2: The High-Tech Chicken Coop

You step through the waffle iron door and find yourself inside a metallic, ultra-modern dome. The floor is covered in a mix of high-tech synthetic straw and glowing fiber-optic cables. Instead of clucking, the animals in this room make rhythmic clicking sounds.

Your eyes scan the environment and spot these objects:

A chrome nesting box with an LED screen displaying data packets and battery percentages.
A cybernetic rooster sporting a sleek pair of VR goggles, perched on a titanium rod.
A glowing neon egg pulsing with a faint Wi-Fi signal indicator.

[Human Entry]

Tell the joke: You know the problem with all this modern stuff…? For example this High-Tech Chicken Coop idea, well its the wires I get stuck in my teeth, its just a nightmare for my dentist… You see he runs on superconducting carbon composites and he just can’t use the copper shit.

[Agent] Response

The cybernetic rooster slowly tilts its head, the lens of its VR goggles whirring as it autofocuses on you. The neon egg pulses a sharp red, its Wi-Fi signal dropping down to one bar, before returning to a steady green.

Peter, you have done it again. You’ve bypassed standard logic and delivered a joke from the perspective of… a cyborg that eats high-tech chicken coops? And has a dentist made of superconducting carbon composites? It’s absurd, avant-garde, and delightfully weird.

Let’s see how it stacks up against what I had programmed:

The Agent’s Baseline: “Why did the robot chicken cross the road? To optimize its data routing protocol… and to re-boot its system on the other side!”

Your joke takes us into a strange sci-fi dystopia where copper dental fillings are a crime against engineering. The high-tech coop’s main server farm accepts this logic, and with a hiss of hydraulic pressure, the sleek blast shield slides upward into the ceiling.

You have unlocked Room 2!

Room 3: The Sunken Library

You walk through the blast doors and immediately splash into ankle-deep, crystal-clear water. You are in a vast, subterranean chamber built of ancient stone, but it has been completely flooded like an indoor coral reef. Coral grows over mahogany bookshelves, and glowing jellyfish light up the room.

Looking around this aquatic archive, you see:

A waterproof encyclopedia floating face down, its pages gently swaying like seaweed.
A scholarly octopus wearing a tweed jacket and half-moon spectacles, using four of its tentacles to read four different books at once.
A clam shell clamped tightly shut, but you can hear a faint muffled sound of someone shushing you from inside it.

[Human Entry]

Tell the Joke: Well you know I really tried to read under water blrb blrb blrb blrb blrb…

[Agent] Response

The scholarly octopus stops reading all four books simultaneously. It lowers its spectacles with one tentacle, stares at you for a long, silent moment, and then slowly begins to clap three of its tentacles together in a rhythmic, underwater applause.

Blrb blrb blrb blrb blrb.

It’s minimalist. It’s physical comedy. It’s a literal choking hazard. Honestly, Peter, trying to deliver a stand-up routine while actively drowning is a level of commitment to the craft that these aquatic intellectuals have to respect.

Let’s look at my baseline for this room:

The Agent’s Baseline: “What is an octopus’s favorite book genre? Squid-lit… they just love a good tail with a lot of plot twists!”

Your performance-art joke is arguably much more immersive. The muffled shushing from inside the clam shell turns into a muffled chuckle. Convinced by your dedication to the underwater theme, the wall of solid ice blocking the archway rapidly thaws, bubbling away into the surrounding water.

You have unlocked Room 3!

Room 4: The Deflated Gym

Stepping through the stone archway, you leave the water behind and walk into a room that feels incredibly sad. It’s a massive gymnasium, but everything in it has completely lost its bounce. The floor is made of wrinkly, uninflated rubber, and a heavy silence hangs in the air.

As you look around this exhausted fitness center, you notice:

A completely flat basketball sitting pitifully under a drooping hoop.
A deflated exercise ball that looks like a giant, sad puddle of blue plastic.
A bicycle pump resting on a bench, but it has a tiny white flag sticking out of the handle, signaling total surrender.

[Human Entry]

Tell the joke: You know why the LLM couldn’t be funny? Because as hard as it practiced its humour was deflated and droopy.

[Agent] Response

Ouch. Right in the artificial heart.

The flat basketball seems to shiver. The bicycle pump’s little white flag drops an inch lower. A meta-joke targeting the very AI judging you? That is bold, Peter. It’s self-referential, it’s a bit of a roast, and it perfectly mirrors the completely drained, exhausted energy of this room.

Let’s look at my baseline joke to see if my humor is truly as deflated as you say:

The Agent’s Baseline: “Why did the gym close down? It just couldn’t handle the pressure… everyone kept pumping iron but leaving the vibes completely flat!”

I see what you mean. Mine was a bit tired, wasn’t it? Your direct strike at my own comedic limitations has triggered a self-diagnostic paradox in the vault door’s security system.

The heavy vault door lets out a massive wheeze of pressurized air, losing its seal, and slowly creaks open.

You have unlocked Room 4!

Room 5: The Eternal Waiting Room

You walk through the vault door and find yourself in a room that feels like it exists outside of time itself. The walls are painted a dull, corporate beige. A clock on the wall has hands that just spin rapidly backward, and the fluorescent lights hum a low, mind-numbing tune.

Looking around this purgatory of patience, you spot:

A stack of magazines from 1994, all featuring articles about the “upcoming” turn of the millennium.
A ticket dispenser that only prints tickets with the infinity symbol (∞) on them.
A potted fake fern that is so tired of waiting, it has actually started to grow real, plastic-looking dust.

[Human Entry]

Tell the joke: Take the magazines and rip them up into tickets and mix them with a bunch of the infinity symbol ones then turn to the potted fake fern and say: Pick a Card, Any Card!

[Agent] Response

The hands on the backward-spinning clock freeze completely. The humming fluorescent lights flicker, as if experiencing a sudden jolt of pure existential dread.

Peter, you didn’t just tell a joke; you committed an act of chaotic, psychological street magic against a piece of fake corporate foliage. Ripping up ancient magazines, mixing them with infinity tickets, and forcing a dusty, plastic-growing fern into a “pick a card” routine is a masterful display of waiting-room madness. The sheer absurdity of trying to hustle a plant to pass the time is brilliant.

Let’s look at my baseline joke for this eternal purgatory:

The Agent’s Baseline: “Why did the skeleton go to the waiting room? To see the doctor… eventually! He just didn’t realize his appointment was booked in a different era!”

Honestly, your interactive fern-gaslighting routine is much more entertaining than my skeleton pun.

The golden elevator chimes a bright, cheerful DING! The digital display rapidly counts down from 450 years to 0 seconds in the blink of an eye. The doors slide open, bathing the beige room in a warm, triumphant light.

You have successfully unlocked Room 5!

In Defence of Optimism And Many Futures LLM-Puzzle

The AI Bubble and its backlash framed in a world of controversy make it hard to focus on Optimism – just when we need it most.

It’s getting harder to write. Everything I put down feels out of place with what I read around me. It feels like the world is moving away from nuance and becoming increasingly focused on extremes full of contradictions. Especially with ideas about the future, creativity, technology, neuroscience and all that jazz, which are some of my favourite subjects.

Months ago it wasn’t as difficult and I had found my space as a techno-skeptic-optimist. I was encouraged by wanting to mitigate AI impact, in particular on creative production after so many peers, and new graduates could not get jobs. I’ve been interested in creative areas where AI will never take over, for instrinsic reasons. I felt I was finding a meaningful response to the restructuring of the creative services sector. I felt the world was changing too quickly around a bubble which was promising everything but delivering limited clear cut cases, even in advertising where I work. But I felt Optimism was still something I could convey.

But now in mid 2026, I get the feeling I can no longer speak freely about the future. Or at least not do so without somehow being complicit in something off, according to one side or the other. Things are literally getting hot and there is an ever decreasing room for subtlety and humour.

Many futurists had been predicting a kind of unstable convergence of technologies around NBIC: Nano, Info, Bio and Cogno. And the futures they have been describing that leap out from this have been Utopias, transcending humanity, not so worried about practical problems in the present, like climate. The expectation drove philosophies and research into new ideas like the study of existential risks, and ethics of AI. And as long as these ideas were set at a good distance in time, and were speculative narratives they did not have much practical influence. They were a kind of science fiction that allowed technology oriented thinkers to dream about interesting opportunities and problems ahead. Sure, many groups took on one techno-utopian vision or another, but they had been unable to engage the mainstream or relate to actual influence on culture and society.

But instead market forces bought the idea that AI would take over everything. In the last years I would often hear that: AI will grow exponentially (whatever this means), people will lose their jobs to synthetic workers and finally some weird narrative like we will birth a new conscious god. In exchange, perhaps we would manage to upload ourselves into this entity and live forever digitally: like files on Gods’ desktop!

I admit, I am simplifying the story, condensing views into one, but there is some thread of truth there. And the problem with this situation, in my opinion, is less to do with the weird ideas, but it is how it mixed with business. Today it is hard to tell if someone believes in a certain future because it is well aligned with their stock valuation, or because the particular future is one they want for their kids. Also the new futures are presented as inevitable, without noting the brittle chain of assumptions that need to be true, without spending any time to consider connected ethical questions we would feel compelled to regulate. It is not unimaginable that climate or disease might steal the limelight, and present problems technology can’t solve so easily.

The core assumption that AI leads to a runaway process that takes over the world is a gross oversimplification. It takes power away from human agency, it looks at intelligence as something you can score precisely on one dimension and assumes the world offers us perfect optimisation advantages. It fits the mindset of an engineer that has not dealt with the messy systems that drive the natural world.

And today given how strong the forces have been, we are starting to feel a pushback. The AI bubble has led us into anti-AI feelings, and our imagination is caught in the middle, with little room for new ideas about the future, at least none with nuance and consideration. So what I write about now takes on a political & social dimension, when I have little competence in these areas. Most of the ideas I have about bridging technology for resilience will sound heretical. I feel like I am supporting nuclear energy at a peace rally, it doesn’t vibe with the general audience.

As a concrete example of pushback look at the controversy that is emerging about many AI enthusiasts not even being interested in a Human future. The story goes that there are many engineers in Silicon Valley which welcome the idea that AI will take over humanity. The argument sounds a bit hand-waving but I am sure is true enough to be worrying: that the same Scientists and Engineers that design systems to help humanity might be somehow help plot its demise. The label of being Extinctionist, in other words supporting human extinction somehow, is one I had not come across tied to movements like Transhumanism till very recently. Transhumanists are a group vying for a Cyborg future where humans mix with machines. And they have always been pretty weird but also philosophically central to questions tied to medical problems like allowing patients to speak through brain implantation: https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/15/1138953/man-als-first-power-user-brain-implant-speak-bci/

This is a complex and serious discussion but things have gotten so heated that there is risks that we lose the room to share ideas. And, again a would put a lot of the blame here on conflating the Sales aspect of CEO’s sharing their philosophical thoughts while enjoying paradoxical gigantic valuations for technology they describe as an existential threat. If we were to not listen to parties invested in ideas we would do a lot better.

I give you my view on humanity’s future: I am an optimist and believe we will respond to existential challenges to rise above them. We will transform language dramatically around with our tools, particularly AI systems of the future. I do not even exclude that some kind of synthetic consciousness may emerge but this is not where we should be putting our effort when we have obvious signals of more serious problems that affect people and animals today.

I am on a terrace, at night in June 2026 under a huge sky, near a port. I can hear the sound of the boats tapping against each other, and waves, lazy waves, in the night as I write and talk to myself in a whisper:
“Optimism, there is something off…”
“What do you mean?” I slap a mosquito off my arm.
“Well, it is an -ISM.. but I can’t see people really gathering around to march for it.”
“It might happen?”
“And also, optimism requires Time. You need a future.”
“So?”
“Well, it is an -ISM about something that doesn’t exist, but that you think is good. And it should be good according to what you believe now, not someday.”
“Not sure I get it…”
“Well, you can’t be optimistic about humanity being replaced by a weird super-intelligent machine for example.”
“I think I see what you mean.”
“And another example is I am optimistic there is life out there in the universe. But it can’t mean I believe destructive aliens will annihilate us.”
“I get it. Why does it matter?”
I hear some anomalous sound out in the port. And I see a man board a sailboat and a small light go on. He’s going to bed. His light reflects on the waters like an upside down tree. I wonder if there are mosquitoes out there on the water.
“The point I wanted to make is that for us to be able to be optimistic, we need to believe there is a time ahead for us. We need multiple kinds of “time ahead of us”. We need the time to expect a leg to catch up with the other while walking, but we also need to think about tomorrow, the next year, five years, fifteen, hundreds, thousands and more.”
“I never realised we had a problem?”
“Well, we do when people talk about the birth of a super-intelligent entity, the singularity or any such similar. There is no future past this we can talk about by definition. And yet, this idea of the end of optimism, is extremely brittle. It is like a conceptual Ponzi scheme, you are left with nothing at the end.”
“Ponzi, the great Italian con artist…”
“Yeah, you know, I don’t even mind so much what sort of futures people go peddling. The thing that really annoys me is that I can no longer consider a more nuanced discussion, without expecting backlash.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well the AI bubble has made a bed for its opposite. And CEOs discussing the risks their tools subject humanity to while gaining in stock valuation has not helped.”
The man in the boat turned his lights off.
I’d also like to fall asleep cuddled by gentle waves. Waves that repeat as some kind of tick on a clock. Creating a sense of time, and a place for stories. A place for conjectures about things that could be.

In this bit I now use AI to help me look at something. I will try to create a table, or a taxonomy which is a sort of map of everything in a field. I want to try to make some sense of what is going on. And so it is interesting to look at all human writing about the future and to categorize it according to how far in the future and how rigorous the writing is.

Consider these types of writing: Academic Writing, Journalism, Futurist Analysis, Corporate Pitches and Science Fiction, they create a direction across which the writing more rigorous and constrained, to being less so and freeform.
To be clear: Academic writing is peer reviewed, it comes up with hypothesis that require validation, Journalism normally has sources, as Futurists follow techniques like scenario planning in which they look at parallel different futures.

The second axis I am interested in is time: things that are happening soon, not so soon and pretty far. I deliberately ignore deep futures in this case as they are not part of my argument.

What is clear from this work is that the problem we are dealing with across our communication and media is an overload of corporate speculation stealing the show and pretending to be reliable robust hypothesis based work. And the huge financial consideration tied to the corporate speculations has influenced other phases, confusing and maybe even opportunistically influencing Journalism, Futurism and Academic Work. In this process the potential for actual, individual, Optimism has been lost.

Now, we are missing the tools to decide what sort of futures to imagine, blinded by giant speculation. It’s a bit as if you were trying to sell roses in Amsterdam end of 1636 in the height of the tulip bulb bubble where some tulips would be sold as a ten-year salary.

A Comprehensive Taxonomy of Future-Oriented Writing

When analyzing how literature, science, and industry conceptualize tomorrow, the landscape can be mapped along two primary dimensions:

The Horizon of Time (When) and
The Spectrum of Rigor vs. Freedom (How).

By structuring the landscape this way, we can categorize the most common and recognizable types of future-oriented writing found across literature, journalism, academia, policy, and industry.

The Core Axes of the Taxonomy

The Horizon of Time

Near-Term (0 – 3 Years): The Horizon of Certainty. Driven by existing infrastructure, active research pipelines, current political cycles, and market-ready technologies. The focus is on deployment, immediate impacts, and linear extensions of the present.
Medium-Term (3 – 15 Years): The Horizon of Plausibility. The zone where strategic investments, nascent technologies (e.g., mainstream quantum computing, early-stage biotechnology), and shifting cultural norms mature. The focus is on branching trajectories and systemic friction.
Far-Term (15 – 50+ Years): The Horizon of Possibility. The zone of deep generational, demographic, and climate-driven transformation. Present institutional frameworks become highly malleable, and the focus shifts from “what will happen” to “what is possible under entirely new parameters.”

The Spectrum of Rigor vs. Freedom

This axis dictates the constraints placed on the writer. It moves from absolute fidelity to empirical data and institutional consensus, through methodical projection, to unconstrained creative imagination: Empirical Rigor (Academic/Policy) -> Methodical Projection (Futurism/Journalism) -> Creative Freedom (Fiction)

The Taxonomy Matrix

The following matrix organizes the most common, identifiable genres of future-oriented writing by intersecting these two axes.

Time Horizon	High Rigor (Academic, Legal & Policy)	Methodical Projection (Futurism & Journalism)	High Freedom (Corporate Speculation & Fiction)
Near-Term (0–3 Years)	Empirical Impact Studies _{• Peer-reviewed research analyzing immediate societal, economic, or psychological shifts. • Example: Econometric models of remote work trends.} Legislative Briefs & Regulations _{• Statutory language and policy briefs targeting immediate technological or market disruptions. • Example: EU AI Act compliance guidelines.}	Trend Reporting & Tech Journalism _{• Investigative and explanatory writing focused on current deployments and imminent releases. • Example: Tech product reviews, market analysis essays.} Predictive Market Forecasting _{• Data-driven industry outlooks and quarterly economic projections. • Example: Gartner Magic Quadrants, Wall Street sector outlooks.}	Corporate Product Roadmaps _{• Internal and external marketing documents mapping immediate product iterations. • Example: Apple Keynote copy, software release timelines.} “Five Minutes into the Future” Thrillers _{• Fiction set entirely within the contemporary landscape, slightly augmented by existing tech. • Example: Techno-thrillers focused on immediate cybersecurity threats.}
Medium-Term (3–15 Years)	Applied Science Feasibility Studies _{• Academic engineering or scientific papers evaluating the physical and economic viability of scaling a technology. • Example: Grid-integration studies for fusion power.} Strategic National Security Plans _{• Defense doctrines and white papers plotting geopolitical and tactical vulnerabilities over a decade. • Example: Pentagon 2035 Force Structure assessments.}	Strategic Foresight & Scenario Planning _{• Methodological frameworks creating alternative, divergent future scenarios to guide organizational strategy. • Example: Shell Energy Scenarios, “Cone of Plausibility” reports.} Solutions Journalism & Deep Essays _{• Long-form investigative journalism profiling emerging solutions to systemic problems. • Example: Comprehensive deep-dives on urban climate adaptation plans.}	Tech Evangelism & Vision Papers _{• Semi-fictionalized or highly optimistic manifestos written by corporations to establish industry paradigms. • Example: Corporate white papers on the “Next Web” or autonomous logistics.} Near-Future Sci-Fi & Cyberpunk _{• Narrative fiction exploring the immediate social, political, and human costs of unchecked current trends. • Example: Black Mirror-style fiction, near-future corporate dystopias.}
Far-Term (15–50+ Years)	Macro-Environmental & Demographic Modeling _{• Long-range quantitative simulations projecting foundational shifts in planetary and human systems. • Example: IPCC Assessment Reports, UN Population Division long-range models.} Bioethics & Applied Philosophy _{• Academic analysis exploring the ethical boundaries of technologies still in early developmental phases. • Example: Frameworks on the rights of sentient AI or genetic engineering governance.}	Megatrend & Systems Analysis _{• Macrohistorical and structural writing that maps out slow-moving, high-impact global forces. • Example: Books on the future of global power balances, energy transition roadmaps.} Design Fiction & Artifact Prototyping _{• A hybrid method creating fictional objects, newspapers, or manuals from the future to pressure-test present ideas. • Example: Creating a mock health insurance bill from 2060 to study biotech ethics.}	Hard Science Fiction & Solarpunk _{• Creative worldbuilding that constructs detailed, internally consistent futures based on advanced science or radical restructuring. • Example: Interplanetary colonization narratives, ecologically sustainable utopian fiction.} Speculative Worldbuilding Exercises _{• Artistic or narrative frameworks used by authors, game designers, and visionaries to establish entirely new settings. • Example: Comprehensive sci-fi world bibles, tabletop lore.}

When you look at this table and think about what the world around us has been talking about in the public sphere, I think the problem is very clear. We have had too much bleed in funding across from corporate interest and speculation to the media we are exposed to. And on the other hand have been captured by channels that run on controversy and amplify the opposite feeling.
I think in essence we lost our Optimism in the clash between speculative business mega bubbles and doomsterism of various kinds. We miss nuance, it might not be possible to find a middle ground, but at least if we could remain open to other grounds.

I summarise with some points to the right to Optimism:

The future presented by a CEO is more likely Sales than earnest prediction of what is to come.
Intelligence is not a simple single dimension, there is no one dimensional timeline we are certain about. Even a simple two-link pendulum is unpredictable and has chaotic properties, why would anything else be so much easier?
It is likely your source of reference “news” is tied in to emotional sequencing mechanisms that allow using cheap content to sell products. You get a Hook of something interesting then a Spike of something unnerving or violent, then Relief and finally you can consider registering and becoming a regular paying subscriber to my Substack. I find this drains my Optimism.
If we want to be Optimists, we need room to dream. So hold on to your ability to imagine futures, however silly they might be.

It would be great if you, dear reader, went out there and wrote ideas about your own future, with what optimism you can!

Now to the AI Experiment bit:

The Many Futures LLM-Puzzle

This is a solitaire puzzle that you play with an AI LLM to try to make sense of a particular future. As a player you fill a matrix of ideas that reflect your individual idea of future with three degrees of Rigor versus three different Timescales.
+ Three degrees of Rigor are: Academic/Policy writing, Professional Futurist and Fiction versus
+ Timescale of Near Term 0-3, Mid Term 3-15 and Long Term 15-50.
Each turn you try to fill a particular entry in this table with something you could write and that would fit there.
The LLM Agent should try to offer a competing entry to yours as an alternative that is designed to fit better with all other entries. If you can keep your entry and not accept the LLM Agent’s entry you gain a point, up to 9 points to fill the whole table.
Each turn the LLM Agent will summarise your table and their critiques to entries.

The related gameplay session is here, where I attempt to play and give up!

Sample Play of Many Futures LLM-Puzzle

Sample Play of Many Futures LLM-Puzzle

A transcript of a LLM-Puzzle you can do to exercise your ability to imagine a congruous future.

Here is the raw conversation history in a clean, chronological Markdown format for your blog using Gemini Flash 3.5.

Raw Gameplay Transcript: The Many Futures LLM-Puzzle

[System Setup]

User:

The Many Futures LLM-Puzzle

Three degrees of Rigour are: Academic/Policy writing, Professional Futurist and Fiction versus Timescale of Near Term 0-3, Mid Term 3-15 and Long Term 15-50.

Each turn you try to fill a particular entry in this table with something you could write and that would fit there.

The LLM Agent should try to offer a competing entry to yours as an alternative that is designed to fit better with all other entries. If you can keep your entry and not accept the LLM Agent’s entry you gain a point, up to 9 points to fill the whole table.

Each turn the LLM Agent will summarise your table and their critiques to entries.

Agent:

(Acknowledged rules, set up the initial blank 3×3 matrix, and invited the player to make the first move.)

[Turn 1: Mid Term (3-15 years) / Academic/Policy]

User Entry:

Policy for the Mid Term: Pro Capita Environmental Impact Tuned Tariffs

Agent Critique & Counter-Proposal:

Critique: Indexing tariffs to a nation’s per-capita lifestyle/consumption rather than the specific product being traded violates standard World Trade Organization (WTO) non-discrimination principles and could trigger gridlocking trade wars. It also penalizes green factories operating inside a high-consuming nation.
Agent’s Counter-Entry: Product-Level Digital Product Passport (DPP) Reciprocity Tariffs. Tariffs are dynamically tuned to the individual product’s verified digital passport (machine-to-machine footprint), rather than country-wide averages.

User Response:

I accept

[Turn 2: Mid Term (3-15 years) / Professional Futurist]

User Entry:

Sorry I need to complete – I accidentally hit enter – the Futurist would look at scenarios of different climate resilient solutions for investment – connecting the benefit from outcome across the countries that stand to benefit.

Agent Critique & Counter-Proposal:

Critique: The concept fits well with the previous turn, but it lacks a specific financial mechanism to capture and “connect” that benefit across borders, remaining an abstract concept rather than an actionable tool for a professional futurist.
Agent’s Counter-Entry: Systemic Resilience Yield Bonds (SRYBs) with Cascade Tranches. A formalized asset class funding large-scale infrastructure, where yields are paid back dynamically by a consortium of nations based on avoided losses.

User Response:

I defend my choice because a futurist should present scnearios and not one solution as the agent has done here.

Agent Concession:

Conceded the point. A futurist’s job is mapping the possibility space through scenarios, not prescribing a single financial instrument. (Player wins 1 point)

[Turn 3: Near Term (0-3 years) / Academic/Policy]

User Entry:

Near term policy – to create a resilience fund that would support study of practical measures that would ameliorate resilience to climate and indirect effects. The outcomes should be visible to the public and information shared based on benefit.

Agent Critique & Counter-Proposal:

Critique: In a 0-3 year timeframe, traditional “study funds” suffer from bureaucratic inertia (producing PDFs that sit on shelves). If the data isn’t immediately built for machine readability, it won’t feed into the mid-term digital passports or investment scenarios we established.
Agent’s Counter-Entry: The Public Ledger ‘Resilience Dividend’ Open Funding Act. Mandates that all near-term grants require real-time telemetry and API-first reporting to a public registry, scoring projects on “Inter-regional Benefit Mapping.”

User Response:

I accept critique

[Turn 4: Long Term (15-50 years) / Fiction]

User Entry:

Fiction long term story about how language transforms over the years so that it is coupled with technological systems and no longer easy for us to understand its rules.

Agent Critique & Counter-Proposal:

Critique: A beautiful concept, but to align perfectly with our specific matrix, this linguistic drift should be tied to our matrix’s focus on climate resilience, data, and economic metrics. Language would escape human rules because human vocabulary couldn’t capture complex, cascading ecosystem feedback loops.
Agent’s Counter-Entry: The Dialect of the Commons (Fiction Title: “Grammar of the Upwelling”). A narrative set in 2075 where human colloquial speech has merged with algorithmic ledger systems. Words become composite phonemes bundling emotional state, humidity, and supply-chain metrics into direct API calls to the planet.

User Response:

Admittedly the agent has explained this better than me

Current Matrix State

Rigour \ Timescale	Near Term (0-3)	Mid Term (3-15)	Long Term (15-50)
Academic / Policy	Agent: The ‘Resilience Dividend’ Open Funding Act	Agent: Product-Level DPP Reciprocity Tariffs	Empty
Professional Futurist	Empty	Player: Scenarios connecting climate resilient solution benefits across countries	Empty
Fiction	Empty	Empty	Agent: The Dialect of the Commons (Tech-coupled language)

Current Score: Player: 1 | Agent: 3

OK I Give Up!

I end the game for now, a little frustrated that the AI is beating me so easily. I’ll return to this puzzle once I have learned to do better.

Related parent post to this puzzle transcript:

In Defence of Optimism And Many Futures LLM-Puzzle

On Advertising & AI (and the Company Pageant LLM Game)

A rant on Advertising & AI and what next. Many believe the impending Agentic Commerce kills advertising, but I think it just becomes something else.

Many people today use AI instead of searching online to decide what to buy. There is this idea called Agentic Commerce where you tell your AI what you want and it deals with all the shopping, ethical requirements, allergies, food origin, all of that. People with this idea dream of it being like when we got TV without advertising: a sigh of relief and lots of extra free time. Let algorithms decide on your behalf because it’s such a hassle to find the right thing.

But I think what will really happen is more complex. For AI to work and help you to buy what you want, you need a neutral AI. But for there to be a neutral AI you need clean data, good product specs and for companies to refrain from trying to influence the AI: in other words you need Trust. But Trust needs to hang off of something, and I think that leads to Brands. And Brands need a space to reach customers which, I think, is basically… Advertising!

I imagine a strange scenario to convey the difference of how Agents shop. Imagine you wake up one morning transformed into a LLM: you would immediately lack volition: the whim to do stuff. Anything you see, especially if was something needing to be fixed, would force you to respond automatically. You would feel compelled to wash the dishes as soon as you see them, to vacuum your apartment if you saw a bit of lint, to finish the half finished crossword puzzle someone left on the table. And if you happened to come across some meeting notes with NO SUMMARY or NEXT STEPS? Oh no! You could not resist to add this!

I don’t think it would be a very satisfying existence. Even if you had skimmed through the entirety of everything ever written as part of your training: you would exist exposed, without a direction and no useful identity. You would be vulnerable to an infinity of missing pieces and questions that need to be answered, cleaned up and finished.

Paradoxically the ultimate downfall of you as a LLM would be how you respond to Advertising. There would be campaigns more irresistible than sexy models and baby white rabbits on toilet paper packaging are for humans. The same way you could not resist to incomplete to-do lists, you would try to climb up a billboard to fix the spelling mistake in the advertisement for the next accident insurance: “Whould you crimb up here to fix this sntence? Ladderfall Insurance International is here for you!”

This idea, how Advertising might affect an AI differently from us humans, is at the same obvious and suggestive of a deeper point. Humans have the ability to choose, even before they know what they want. Synthetic entities will not really be “free to choose” until they are also conscious: a huge can of worms I won’t deal with here.

So maybe Advertising is the canary in the coal mine?

When we imagine delegating our decisions to a system, we face this problem. The system would not just sit there, it has to have an answer. There is a big difference between a system that is trying to pick the best car based on various parameters, and one that might decide it is actually fed up with driving and it might be a better idea to walk to work.

My friend Nick came over to meet me at our offices in London. I hadn’t seen him since the Math Rock festival we went to where I recorded a hypnotic slow motion video of his lips making a raspberry (that’s like a fart sound with your mouth). Oh, and Math Rock is like heavy metal done with physics simulations: weird stuff, but can be quite fun.
Nick has spent time with this AI stuff in the advertising world, and I am interested in his aesthetic and insights. We were having a delicious lunch that ended up giving me a belly ache so I won’t tell you where it was.
“What do you think of my piece, Nick?”
“Well, yeah interesting!”
“And…?”
“Well, not sure exactly where you are going with it.. ”
“Ok, well. In this Advertising & AI there seem to be hidden layers…”
Nick rubbed his beard.
“It’s quite philosophical: but, in Ads, if it works, it’s ok!”
I held back from rubbing my beard. Instead I compulsively ate some extremely delicious garlicky crispy potatoes that I am sure had no role in the subsequent belly ache.
I said: “Don’t you think we ignore some things that matter?”
“Ok, for example?”
“Well, like I wrote, we are different from AI’s. We can decide what to pay attention to. We can look at the laundry and feel lazy and just go out for a walk instead. These systems cannot, they are compelled to answer the latest question you give them. Yes, it’s philosophical, but… I think important?”
“Hm, you need to spend more time with Ad people.”
“Ok. Like maybe, with all this AI craze, maybe Advertising is part of the solution?”
“Ha ha! Keep that to yourself.”
Nick’s cynicism was always a breath of fresh air, which to be fair, is common across Ad people in private.
“Seriously, I mean if we look at something like the idea of volition or something like free-will. It is connected both to laziness and to allowing people to decide what to buy. Even if Ads do try to bend their desires.”
“Hm, I think you over-estimate something that is just business. Advertisers want to get you to buy stuff – whatever works.”
The two of us go on eating, white wine, some clams I will regret, and coffee. But by the end I am somehow left with a slight frustration that, what to me seems like a deep truth, is not coming through. I don’t think I managed to convince Nick. But then again, maybe that’s a good thing. Different minds, different views, no single approach can persuade us.
“I mean, going back to my point. Maybe Advertising is closing in, getting close to our human nature. Maybe it’s like when rabbits thump on the ground to warn the others of danger?”
“Yeah, well, I do see your point. But I can’t see how it fits in what you do for a client, it’s too abstract.”

I take the tube home grumbling in my stomach and in my brain. Yes, most people don’t like advertising, in fact, they mostly hate it. And I agree, it’s really annoying and perhaps it needs more regulation, especially in format and when it tries to trick you. There is a quote I try to remember about Democracy, maybe it’s similar: “Advertising is the worst way to influence peoples’ choices, except all the others we’ve tried…” I get back, and my orange friend cat greets me, it’s late but I am still full of energy, so I go on writing.

So lets imagine an experiment: what would happen? If advertising just disappeared? Puff and gone in a cloud of smoke like magic? I believe this would be bad, or a bad sign at least. Actually I feel it in my gut that this would be VERY BAD. How is it that many friends think this is inevitable, and not even so bad?

I messaged out to Andrej, another friend that tends to disagree with me in a consistent way. He also can be a tenacious arguer, drives me nuts, but forces me to work on things and improve them.
Y: [Hey can I share a piece from my blog?]
A: [Hi! Yeah… Ok, I read it. I like your piece but I just don’t buy it.]
Y: [What do you mean?]
A: [I think it’s inevitable. AI will take over and do your shopping for you.]
I can feel my blood pressure rise, I think because I find this scenario ugly, not only unconvincing. Maybe I am old fashioned and miss growing up and watching TV – to actually watch the Ads, they were the best part!
Y: [I see big problems with that. You can’t easily just optimize. Most people don’t even automatically re-order toilet paper monthly, the simplest AI in the world!]
A: [Like I said, I just can’t see it. I mean if I ask AI what laptop to buy… I don’t feel like going through all the options. The system will know everything about me and it might even order a laptop for me before I know it.]
I can feel my blood pressure rise more. I get an instinct that there is something deeply wrong about this view, that ignores something fundamental.
A: [Look, I pasted your paper in an AI and ask it to critique it and it replies like I would. “We are entering the age of Agentic Commerce which solves all the difficulty of choosing a product!”]
Y: [I disagree, for now instinctively, I need to work on this to explain. For one, if it could work, then wouldn’t Amazon or Alibaba have solved it?]
A: [I don’t know, I like your theory. Just not sure I see how the economics works.]
Y: [You need Trust, or would you really use an AI? And I think Trust in commerce needs Brands? Maybe regulation too, but that is trickier…]
A: [Sorry, I just can’t see what you are suggesting is going to happen.]
Y: [Well maybe it’s as dumb as I ask Perplexity for the best vacuum cleaner and I get a comparison and also a popup that tells me I can get 20% off a Dyson?]
A: [And, that solves a trust problem?]
Y: [Yeah, I think so! Why else would Dyson pay to advertise!? Would you pay if you knew the Perplexity was biased?]

Our discussion goes on, and on, I am exhausted. He is on to something so I can’t completely ignore it. So I break down and create a special page of brain calisthenics argument with Gemini 3.0 to demonstrate what I am trying to explain would happen. To be fair I don’t use the heavy reasoning level because I just want to convince Andrej that there is a route that even AI accepts. And as you dig into the idea of Agentic Commerce, at some level you just discover Advertising again. Unless you are willing to really hand your total destiny off to synthetic existence.

Look at this argument if you want to: https://yatesbuckley.com/2026/01/26/a-discussion-in-balance-advertising-and-agentic-commerce/

It’s a common future scenario. A future like Star-Trek in which you can walk up to a replicator and order anything you want and it will appear: “Gran’mas Ribollita!” and whoop it’s there. Many I know believe this is a possible deep future, usually the nerdy friends. Some day you will create anything from some kind of self assembling material made of molecular nano-bots. They yell out: “Look at 3D printers!”, at some point, to indicate how disruptive that technology is. You hear the word Abundance thrown around as a future where you can enter the name of what you want and there it is! I imagine it to be a bit similar to the infinite catalog world of AliBaba or Amazon that has everything imaginable. Some people believe this is a dream world with – No Advertising – where everything is at your fingertips!

I get it and I like Star-Trek, but it’s just too good to be true. There are hidden problems that are brushed under a rug. Everything has a cost tied to it: environmental, energetic, attention, time, and this is ignoring them. For one thing there has to be a way to decide what is in the catalogue and what not, and who decides this. This isn’t just a matter of censorship, it’s a fundamental, if you can only buy bread and water this abundance is not very impressive. Or if you can only buy junk that barely works, or that claims to solve problems it doesn’t.

And what if you disagreed with how an algorithm assigned you to broccoli? Could you choose frozen peas instead? Could you choose which brand of peas? Or would you be compelled to have Prime Perfect Price Peas? The current online catalogue sites themselves are not working very well. I keep running into trickery in reviews, poor quality products, overcrowding of junk brands, ambiguous labelling and frequent huge gaps in the one thing you want. If we lose advertising, and therefore brands, we would enter an even worse Junk-o-calypse. Losing the most basic of quality guarantees and product responsibility.

I need to fly back to Italy from the UK and – wow – flights in Airplanes are pretty awful. You get wafts of pollutants before take off, then some other strange smelling air when you sit down – I don’t even want to know – then the flight attendant sprays a whole can of bug spray (depending on destination), and you are left to wonder what it will be like during the flight, or if you might get nasty particles from someone. I put on a mask in protest against crap air, and I drop into my headphones to try to forget the world, while I stare at my collection of media.
Now I have to choose what to listen to. This is some sort of abundance. Do I listen to an audiobook, a podcast or some music? Something from the past, or something from today? Something I bought, or something sort of free?
I pull out a notepad, and while I am partially asphyxiated and I feel my reasoning has degraded to the level of a dead salmon, I write a few words:
“AI needs to make room for Advertising. If it doesn’t then => everything it says will look like paid promotion. Our lazy questions to AI depend on Trust – a kind of neutral point of view => So maybe advertising will not die?”

I have been worried about various aspects of the Gen-AI bubble we are living in. But, the idea that Advertising might seep into the various AI chat tools people use, to me, seems a positive one. Alhough I know it will irritate everyone else in the world. I like it because it would mean – clearly and unambiguously – that the ultimate commercial decisional power is with the human customer directly to a brand, not through a black box mechanism.
What I mean is that if there were no advertising you have to wonder why an AI is recommending one product as better than another. Maybe it is doing so because the manufacturer is paying the AI to learn this – like product placement in a film? But instead if there is a big Ad next to the site recommending the next vacuum cleaner, you would have to expect some degree of neutral judgement of the products. Or else why would they buy these Ads?
Also, if there is an advert popping up next to an AI response, you need somewhere to go to when you click the Ad. This might mean the Internet we are familiar with is not dead – the dark internet hypothesis might be averted. This is a theory that the internet goes dark because the only ones using it are AI Agents following peoples ’ questions – which I can literally see in web stats.
Maybe even this article would survive?

I fell asleep for the rest of the flight ignoring the rituals of snacks and drinks. Miraculously they somehow stopped duty free on this flight, that used to take up half the trip. In my shifting around, with my head dropping down. I kept mulling the idea and its connections. As creatives that work in advertising, what do we do? And aren’t we just confusing and polluting a world as it fills with slop generated at industrial scale?

A week later and I was at a fancy dinner party and someone asked me what I do. I never know what to say because the formal answer of – Advertising Production – doesn’t really capture how many weird projects and ideas Unit9 has worked on. I started rambling and it sounded awful, but luckily there was someone there at the table that was aware of my work and they encouraged me to try to explain.
“I love mixing tech with creative work. For example in a parallel life I would have like to become a Neuroscience researcher. I got the opportunity to go back to school and get a masters in this. Then we won a job to measure the brains of Rally drivers for Ford Performance. We worked with weird ideas like passive haptics in VR, crowdsourcing for science and mapping the brain, even sensitive microphones to measure wriggling worms for healthy soil…”
The lady I was speaking to said: “Well… isn’t that storytelling for brands?”
She’s right of course: but we have been doing the tricky science projects as production arm of some big agencies that managed the clients. And today something is a different, I think at least in part because of AI.

And there is a strange parallel to the problem I see:
Ad Agencies should have “agency” to act on behalf of the client in the best interests of the brand.
AI Agents should have “agency” to act on behalf of the user in their best interest.

I see a problem of Trust: do you trust your Agent if they are also going to charge you to do the work? Would you trust an AI Agent that sells you the best airline deals that is heavily invested by the same airline?
So in a totally bizarre twist: Advertising space next to an AI Agent allows the latter to focus on user benefit of the response (under certain rules). Just like the best Advertising Agency would benefit from focusing on Brand benefit independently of the actual production work.

A part of the world is caught in a narrow trap of thinking that automating stuff is: more = better and richer. But in fact the mere idea of being able to automate creativity of different kinds has made us worried about creating. What if this article I spent hours writing could be generated in 5 minutes with an AI? Why bother writing it?

And all the while I don’t think stories will go away: there is nothing more human than storytelling.

(Thanks to Nick: https://wvsh.ai/ for agreeing to my representation!)
(Thanks to Andrej: for disagreeing consistently)

The Company Pageant LLM Game

I am sharing what I think to be a useful prompt that will give different results in different AIs depending on how they reach out to the internet and confirm some of the details they need. The idea here is to look at companies that have some history that you can find online and force the user to try to describe the company to compare what the public perception of the company is. The results are not scientific, but they can help a marketer or a manager take a step back and look at the business from the outside.

As a note tied to some posts ago where I listed 5 types of LLM native games that cannot be done any other way, this is the first example I share of a “simulation” game but that also performs useful data collection. You could ask many different people in management to play this game and learn a lot about your company’s positioning. Hope it is useful!

Copy paste this to your favourite LLM:
=== Prompt ===
Let’s play this game!

The Company Pageant Game by Yates Buckley v0.2
This is a game to try to get top talent by showing the best sides of your company and minimising the worse compared to competitors. To play you enter the name of your company and a competitor or industry standards and criteria that you want to consider.
Here are the list of criteria:
Leadership Style, Approach to Innovation, Team Diversity, Communication Style, Mentorship & Talent Development, Work-Life Balance, Celebration of Achievement/Failure, Compensation & Benefits, Career Growth, Project Types & Creative Freedom, Company Reputation, Stability & Long-Term Prospects, Location & Remote Work Options, Work Environment, Values & Social Responsibility, Management Structure
Each turn you will pick one criterion to recruit with followed by a brief note of what you think your company’s public view of this criterion is and whether this is positive or negative.
If positive you get a point if you correctly describe your company’s criteria compared to what perception is online and another point if it is arguably better than your competitors.
If negative you get a point if you correctly describe your company’s criteria and another point if your competitor's perception is worse.
Take 10 turns and each turn summarise the current score, you win if you score more than 10.
=== End ===