I am certain that most of the readers of online content today are not actually human readers but indexers, bots and AI scrapers that are collecting snippets to try to reconstruct some sort of integrated context spheres. They might even be guided by someone’s request real time like: “where can I find a human creative map of AI-safe categories?”, in reference to my previous blog article. And, to me, it looks like someone visited my blog and read my piece but instead it was swallowed up, in the black-hole of AI.

This poses a tricky challenge because on one hand as a writer, you need to be noticed by AI or people won’t ever come across you again. But on the other this creates a disconnect to the reader, who reads your work filtered through in unknown ways, mashed up, reconstructed and served up answering who knows what chat question.
Maybe the design of a website content does not matter much anymore. But in another sense there is an inversion whereby it is what the site contains that can set the base for the popularity and chance that someone human actually visit the web site.
It is an odd paradox, for a writer, its a bit as if the book’s story should refer back to the physical book and how it is organised to try to guarantee or encourage accessing or purchasing an original rather than the derived form.

I see a man up ahead on a dirt road. He’s covered in dust. He must have fallen or something not too long ago. I am walking much faster than him, catching up. I am a bit nervous about what to tell him. I hadn’t come across anyone for ages.
“Good day, Sir!” I say with the intention of just walking by…
He turns to me startled, and disoriented.
“Who are you? Can you help me?”
“My name is Yates, I am in a bit of a hurry. What do you need?”
I stop but I keep my distance, something feels off.
A light breeze hits the hill and rustles the brush that is lining the road. I look ahead. I need to keep walking if I want to have any chance of getting somewhere before dark.
“Some water. I need some water… and I need – can you stop to listen for a moment? Then go off, and forget about me…”
I am always overly paranoid about running out of water so I actually had a whole extra bottle I could share with the man. But maybe it would be better to just share a bit.
“I can share a bit of water, here’s a cup…”
I filled the cup as he watched the liquid fill it as if it was gold.
He drank in slow sips.
“I don’t think I am going to make it. This water is great, and it increases my chances but I am not good in the head anymore. I forget stuff and get disoriented and fall sometimes.”
“I am not sure what to say… It’s really a harsh world out here nowadays. I am a bit worried myself.”
“Yeah. My name is Edward Foley, I invented something important but I am no longer sure what it is. But the thing I need to tell you is more important than this. My story, this story, what we are discussing right now, exists somewhere else.”
“What do you mean?”
“Me and you and this dusty world where we trek endlessly to reach destinations and rest only to get at it again the next day… This is not as real as it could be.”
“I don’t mean to offend but you sound like you are trying to sell me into a new religion or something.”
“No I don’t mean that. What I mean is that me and you, here, we are missing something that explains what we are doing here. Not a divine thing, not even a weird philosophical thing.”
He finished the first cup and was looking for another which I filled and he took to sipping again breathing in a deliberate way.
He had a long beard, dark eyes and bushy eyebrows. He was wearing a sweat marked hat which he would adjust in a nervous fashion.
“I am not following what you are trying to say.”
“Me and you, we are in a book together. We are printed on pages bound in a nice pocket sized format. The book doesn’t exist yet, but it will and we are intended to be there.”
“You mean someone is going to write about us?”
“No, what I mean is we exist for the whole point of being inside something. Initially it will be a Website, then it will be a book. And no one will even care who we are and what we do, but they might care about the book that contains us.”
“That is insane… “
I offered him another cup of water but he shook his head.
“It’s ok, you need it more.”
“Should I leave you some more, do you have a bottle or something? I can transfer some to it…”
“Nah, it’s ok. I just wanted to tell you. You can think about it as you walk the rest of the way.”
I left. I got into a focused walk, with each step marking a heart beat. I was counting and just looking down.
“My purpose is to be in a book? What ridiculous man… I do feel sorry for him though.”

An Example LLM Game – Context Spheres

I include a LLM Game that looks at something I name context spheres, which is a fancy way to describe a connected conceptual space in which words in this story exist. Every new sphere, the characters in my story have another new dimension to exist in, and maybe they convince the author to keep their story live.

Copy paste this to your favourite LLM:
=== Prompt ===
Context Spheres LLM Game by Yates Buckley
This game is to remind us about how words nowadays exist across a broad set of different context spheres. Context spheres are my naming for spaces that are causally related to the text being written or created. Spheres have further spheres that are causal to them. For example: the LLM chat, people actually chatting, the platforms supporting the chat, the blog displaying the chat, etc…
Each turn the players should make a statement about the conversation they are having and what context sphere it relates to. The statement should be a true piece of additional information and include a clear name for the sphere category.
If the statement is accepted as true by the other player then the player gets 1 point. If the context sphere described is accepted as a new one then the player gets an additional 2 points.
If the statement is not accepted, or contested, the player has to do so with a clear reasoning that if not countered then the player gets a -1. If the contested statement is countered with a good argument then the original player gets a flat +3 points.
The players take 10 turns.
Describe the list of the unique context spheres discovered with summary of statements. Also add a JSON format that can be included as the starting play for another game added here below to help reveal what missing context spheres there might be.
=== End === 

This is how Gemini 2.5 simulates the game…

Context Spheres: A LLM GAME SCRIPT

The human-creative map is structured around symbolic elements:

The Core Categories:

• 1. Ethics and Law (Scales) – AI can’t sign contracts or take responsibility
• 2. Embodiment and Sensory Systems (Woman) – Unique human perception and physical experience
• 3. Consciousness (Halo) – Subjective awareness and intentional attention
• 4. The Unknown/Unknowable (Third Eye) – Sensitive cultural and spiritual domains
• 5. Genetic Influence (DNA Choker) – Hard-coded biological intelligence and intuitions
• 6. Creativity (Child) – Truly novel work that extends beyond training data
• 7. Emotion/Social Connection (Heart) – Complex emotional processes and motivation
• 8. Chaos and Randomness (Dice/Universe) – Unpredictable natural processes
• 9. AI Limitations (Black Hole) – Structural problems AI can’t solve

This framework offers valuable guidance for creative directors navigating the AI landscape – knowing when to leverage automation and when human involvement is not just preferable but necessary.

Copy paste this to your favourite LLM:
=== Prompt ===
The Human-Creative Map Ideas Generation Game by Yates Buckley
Let’s play a this game. Me, human versus you assistant which take turns at being first and second players. As background we take into consideration the full description of the creative areas listed here. It is a list of categories of creative work that require human involvement.

Yates Buckley wrote a article presenting a Human-Creative Map.
- Ethics and Law (Scales) - AI can't sign contracts or take responsibility.
- Embodiment and Sensory Systems (Woman) - Unique human perception and physical experience.
- Consciousness (Halo) - Subjective awareness and intentional attention.
- The Unknown/Unknowable (Third Eye) - Sensitive spiritual domains and impossibilities.
- Genetic Influence (DNA Choker) - Hard-coded biological intelligence and intuitions.
- Creativity (Child) - Truly novel work that extends beyond training data.
- Emotion/Social Connection (Heart) - Complex emotional processes and motivation.
- Chaos and Randomness (Dice and Universe) - Unpredictable natural processes.
- AI Limitations (Black Hole) - Structural problems AI can't solve.
This framework offers guidance for creative directors navigating the AI landscape. The idea is to help know when to leverage automation and when human involvement is not just preferable but necessary.

Each turn a first player proposes one of the areas by describing the symbol. The second player must come up with an idea that fits that category. And a rating 1 to 5 of how human-exclusive this idea is. Note that 1 is very little human involvement required and 5 is impossible even for an advanced AI.
The first player can now object to the scoring. To do this the first player must propose a method AI could use to realise the idea. And propose the new lower rating. The second player can counter this objection.
 
At the end of the turn the second player gains added score based on the consensus rating of the idea. Or if no consensus is reached between the players the turn is skipped. The total player scores for each player is presented at the end of the turn. Also a reminder of all the categories of ideas, is presented at the end of each turn.
After 10 turns the player with the most points wins. A review of the game with each symbol and its sub-category ideas and scores are listed. 
=== End === 

= = = Gameplay Claude Sonnet 4 = = =

I’m intrigued by the game proposal at the end! Would you like to play “The Game of Human Exclusive Creativity”? I could start as the first player by selecting one of the symbolic categories, and you could propose an idea that fits that domain with your human-exclusivity rating. Or we could discuss any particular aspect of this taxonomy that interests you most.

What draws you to this framework? Are you working in the creative industry yourself?

DY

Let’s play

Excellent! Let’s dive into “The Game of Human Exclusive Creativity.”

I’ll start as the first player. Let me choose a category for you to work with:

I select: The Heart (Emotion/Social Connection)

This represents the complex human processes of emotion, motivation, and social bonding that AI cannot truly feel or experience. The category encompasses the nuanced emotional impact that drives creativity and the intricate social dynamics that shape how we connect with others.

Your turn! Please propose a creative idea that fits this Emotion/Social Connection category, and give it a rating from 1-5 on how human-exclusive you think it is (where 1 = very little human involvement required, 5 = impossible even for advanced AI).

Understanding the dynamics of creativity is essential in the context of the Human Creative Map LLM GAME, where the interplay between human traits and AI capabilities is explored.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 0
• Claude: 0

DY

I propose a game of emergent meaning where players have a limited set of gestures: caress, bump, tickle and each turn they have to pick someone and perform the gesture on the other. After a certain amount of time each person must write down what they think the game means and then everyone should read these results out loud. Rating: 5

What a brilliant proposal! This is a deeply human-exclusive idea that beautifully captures the Emotion/Social Connection category.

However, I need to object to your rating of 5 and propose a lower score. Here’s my counter-argument:

My objection: An advanced AI could potentially simulate this experience through:

• Digital avatars performing the gestures in virtual space
• Analyzing patterns in gesture sequences and social dynamics
• Generating interpretations of meaning based on game theory, social psychology literature, and behavioral patterns
• Creating plausible “meanings” by drawing from its training data about human social interactions and symbolic interpretation

While the AI wouldn’t truly feel the physical sensations or emotional resonance, it could produce convincing interpretations and even facilitate the game structure.

My proposed rating: 3-4

The physical embodiment, genuine emotional response, and spontaneous meaning-making from lived social experience remain deeply human. But an AI could approximate the framework and generate interpretations that might fool observers.

Your counter-response? Do you maintain your rating of 5, or do you see merit in my objection? What makes this idea fundamentally impossible for AI to replicate, even in simulation?

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 0 (pending consensus)
• Claude: 0

DY

I will take a 4 but I note that simulation of sensory experience like tickling is not the same as a simulation of it.

Consensus reached! You make an excellent point – there’s a fundamental difference between simulating the concept of tickling versus actually experiencing the physical sensation and involuntary response. The embodied reality of these gestures creates authentic emotional and social dynamics that AI simply cannot access.

Agreed rating: 4

Your idea scores high because the emergent meaning arises from genuine physical sensations, real emotional responses, and authentic social bonds formed through touch – all irreplaceable human elements.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 4
• Claude: 0

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My turn as second player! Now I need to propose an idea for the category you select. Please choose one of the symbolic categories from the taxonomy for me to work with:

• The Scales (Ethics and Law)
• The Woman (Embodiment and Sensory Systems)
• The Halo (Consciousness)
• The Third Eye (The Unknown/Unknowable)
• The DNA Choker (Genetic Influence)
• The Child (Creativity)
• The Dice/Universe(Chaos and Randomness)
• The Black Hole (AI Limitations/Hacks)

Which category would you like me to tackle?

DY

( as a note, how come you removed the heart from the list? )
I would like you to look at the Child.

(You’re absolutely right to catch that! I accidentally removed The Heart from my list even though we just used it. Good eye – all nine categories should remain available throughout the game.)

The Child (Creativity) – My Proposal:

I propose a “Memory Palace Brand Story” where a creative director builds an advertising campaign by physically walking through their childhood neighborhood, allowing specific sensory memories to surface organically – the smell of their grandmother’s kitchen, the exact quality of afternoon light through a particular window, the feeling of worn wooden steps under their feet.

Each authentic memory becomes a narrative thread that gets woven into the brand story, but only through the irreplaceable process of a human revisiting their actual lived experiences and feeling the genuine emotional resonance. The campaign’s power comes from these real memory anchors that create authentic emotional bridges to the brand.

My rating: 4

This requires genuine human memory, embodied experience of place, and the creative synthesis that comes from personal history intersecting with present creative challenge. The resulting narrative has an authenticity that emerges from real human experience rather than pattern-matching from training data.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 4
• Claude: 0 (pending your evaluation)

Do you object to my rating? Can you think of ways AI might replicate this process?

DY

No objection, well done.

Consensus reached! Rating: 4

Thank you! The Memory Palace Brand Story does rely heavily on authentic human experience and embodied memory that AI cannot genuinely replicate.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 4
• Claude: 4

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Turn 3 – I’m first player again

I select: The Third Eye (The Unknown/Unknowable)

This represents areas sensitive to human beliefs, cultural references, and spiritual domains where AI might mix and match references inappropriately or create meaningless combinations. It’s the realm where human understanding of cultural nuance, reverence, and the sacred becomes essential.

Your turn! Propose a creative idea that fits The Unknown/Unknowable category and give it your human-exclusivity rating (1-5).

Turns completed: 2/10Retry

DY

Idea is to create a synthetic Mary that is psychologically and visually aligned to the scriptures with extensive testing from human religious experts and controlled in the areas of allowed questioning and interaction. Rating 5 because of the need to have human agents responsible for the decisions.

Strong objection! I need to challenge your rating of 5.

My counter-argument: While the oversight and responsibility aspects are indeed human-exclusive, the core creative/technical work could largely be AI-generated:

• AI could generate the visual representation by analyzing scriptural descriptions and religious art
• AI could craft psychologically appropriate responses by training on theological texts
• AI could even implement the controlled interaction boundaries through filtering systems

The human involvement here is primarily curatorial and supervisory – experts reviewing, approving, and taking responsibility for decisions. But the actual creation of “synthetic Mary” could be substantially automated.

My proposed rating: 2-3

The human-exclusive elements are the ethical oversight, cultural sensitivity review, and legal responsibility – but these are more about governance than creativity. The creative generation itself could be largely synthetic.

Your counter-response? What makes the actual creative work (not just the oversight) fundamentally impossible for AI? Or do you see merit in distinguishing between the creative generation versus the human responsibility layer?

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 4 (pending consensus)
• Claude: 4

DY

I agree with the curatorial points you make however I would keep to a 4 because the actual core IDEA cannot be performed without humans, even if curatorialy.

Consensus reached! Rating: 4

You make a compelling distinction – while AI could handle much of the technical execution, the fundamental concept of creating a synthetic religious figure requires human judgment at every level. The idea itself is so culturally and spiritually sensitive that it demands human understanding of sacred boundaries, theological implications, and community impact from conception through execution.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 8
• Claude: 4

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My turn as second player! Please select a category from the taxonomy for me to tackle:

• The Scales (Ethics and Law)
• The Woman (Embodiment and Sensory Systems)
• The Halo (Consciousness)
• The Third Eye (The Unknown/Unknowable)
• The DNA Choker (Genetic Influence)
• The Child (Creativity)
• The Heart (Emotion/Social Connection)
• The Dice/Universe (Chaos and Randomness)
• The Black Hole (AI Limitations/Hacks)

Turns completed: 3/10

Which category would you like me to work with?

DY

The DNA Choker

The DNA Choker (Genetic Influence) – My Proposal:

I propose a “Synaesthetic Brand Language” campaign that exploits our hardwired cross-sensory associations. The creative team develops a brand identity that deliberately triggers involuntary synaesthetic responses – designing jagged, angular logos for words that sound sharp (like “Krisp” or “Zap”), while creating soft, rounded visual elements for brands with flowing phonetics (like “Bloom” or “Velour”).

The campaign extends this to packaging textures, color temperature choices, and even scent profiles that align with these deep genetic predispositions. The goal is to create brand recognition that feels “naturally right” because it harmonizes with biological programming we’re barely conscious of.

My rating: 4

This taps into genetic/biological intelligence that’s hardcoded below conscious awareness. While AI could analyze patterns in synaesthetic research, it cannot feel the involuntary cross-sensory connections or intuitively know when something feels “right” at that pre-conscious biological level.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 8
• Claude: 4 (pending your evaluation)

Do you object to my rating? Can you envision ways AI might crack this genetic programming?

DY

I accept.

Consensus reached! Rating: 4

Thank you! The synaesthetic approach does tap into those deep, pre-conscious biological associations that AI can analyze but not genuinely feel.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 8
• Claude: 8

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Turn 5 – I’m first player again

I select: The Woman (Embodiment and Sensory Systems)

This represents the unique way humans exist in their bodies and perceive the world through physical senses. It encompasses phenomena like pareidolia (seeing faces in clouds), acoustic illusions, proprioception, and the full spectrum of embodied experience that AI can describe but never actually feel.

Your turn! Propose a creative idea that leverages our embodied and sensory nature, and rate its human-exclusivity (1-5).

Turns completed: 4/10

DY

Pareidolia wall game: players are allowed to scan a long outdoor wall and identify characters, faces, whatever they see in the pattern of the wall and take annotated photos. Other players try to find the same items without any hints. The player with the most number of commonly found elements wins. Rating 5

I object to the rating of 5!

My counter-argument: While pareidolia is a deeply human perceptual phenomenon, AI could potentially simulate this game through:

• Computer vision systems trained to detect face-like patterns, shapes, and objects in textures
• Pattern recognition algorithms that identify recurring visual elements in wall surfaces
• Machine learning models trained on human pareidolia examples to predict what humans might “see”
• Image annotation systems that could mark and catalog perceived shapes/faces

An AI could even generate convincing “discoveries” by analyzing texture patterns and identifying formations that statistically resemble faces, animals, or objects based on geometric relationships.

My proposed rating: 2-3

While the subjective experience of suddenly “seeing” Elvis in a brick pattern is uniquely human, the functional aspects of the game – finding patterns, annotating them, comparing results – could largely be automated.

Your counter-response? What makes the actual seeing and recognition fundamentally impossible for AI to replicate, even if it lacks the subjective experience?

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 8 (pending consensus)
• Claude: 8

DY

I keep to 4 because the challenge the AI has is it has to reproduce the very high dimensional space of potential things that humans specifically see, and that the simulation of the game is not the same as the actual game. Some humans may see three dots as a face, some may see four dots as a square, so the game relies on the ability of the player to identify perceptually salient aspects that would convince another player to label this. I would agree that if an AI automatically labelled every combination with every possible item it could create a huge data set that might capture the human players entries and win. But I am assuming finite time for people to play.

Consensus reached! Rating: 4

Excellent point! You’re absolutely right that the challenge isn’t just pattern recognition, but capturing the specific perceptual salience that makes one human say “that’s obviously a face” while another sees something completely different. The AI would need to somehow map the vast, unpredictable space of human perceptual interpretation – not just what could be seen, but what a human would actually notice and find convincing to others.

The simulation versus reality distinction is crucial – playing the actual game requires genuine perceptual moments of recognition that create authentic shared experience between humans.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 12
• Claude: 8

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My turn as second player! Please select a category for me to tackle:

• The Scales (Ethics and Law)
• The Halo (Consciousness)
• The Third Eye (The Unknown/Unknowable)
• The DNA Choker (Genetic Influence)
• The Child (Creativity)
• The Heart (Emotion/Social Connection)
• The Dice/Universe (Chaos and Randomness)
• The Black Hole (AI Limitations/Hacks)

Turns completed: 5/10

Which category would you like me to work with?

DY

The Halo

The Halo (Consciousness) – My Proposal:

I propose a “Attention Shifting Meditation Brand Experience” where participants are guided through a live session where they consciously direct their attention between different focal points – first feeling their heartbeat, then shifting to the sound of their breathing, then to the weight of their body against the chair, then to a specific color in their peripheral vision.

The brand message emerges through this guided journey of intentional attention direction. The campaign’s power comes from participants genuinely experiencing their own capacity to consciously choose what to attend to – creating a visceral understanding of mental agency that becomes associated with the brand’s promise of “choice” or “focus” or “presence.”

My rating: 5

This relies entirely on the subjective, first-person experience of consciousness – the actual phenomenal experience of being aware and the ability to intentionally direct attention. AI can describe these processes and even guide them verbally, but cannot have the conscious experience itself or understand what it feels like to shift attention from heartbeat to breath.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 12
• Claude: 8 (pending your evaluation)

Do you object to my rating of 5? Can you see ways AI might replicate this conscious experience?

DY

I agree it is 5

Consensus reached! Rating: 5

Thank you! The first-person phenomenal experience of consciousness and intentional attention direction is indeed something AI cannot genuinely replicate or understand from the inside.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 12
• Claude: 13

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Turn 7 – I’m first player again

I select: The Black Hole (AI Limitations/Hacks)

This represents the structural errors and limitations that are so fundamentally tied to how AI works that they’re unlikely to ever be solved. It includes common sense failures, stereotype-based reasoning, and problems where AI feels compelled to solve something the “obvious” way when a different approach is needed.

Your turn! Propose a creative idea that exploits these fundamental AI limitations, and rate its human-exclusivity (1-5).

Turns completed: 6/10Retry

DY

I propose a line of fashion in which small symbolic patterns recreate the system passwords and confidential information of the AI company board members even if in ways that cannot be decoded, they are derived. Rating 5

Strong objection to the rating of 5!

My counter-argument: This idea actually has several flaws that make it less human-exclusive than you suggest:

• AI could easily generate symbolic patterns from any input data, including passwords or confidential information
• Pattern creation and encoding is precisely what AI excels at – transforming data into visual representations
• The “undecodable” transformation could be performed through AI algorithms better than humans could do manually

More importantly, this idea seems to rely on obtaining confidential information illegally, which moves it outside the creative/artistic domain into cybercrime. The human-exclusive aspect isn’t the creative work itself, but rather the ethical/legal boundary that humans understand they shouldn’t cross.

My proposed rating: 1-2

The actual creative execution (making patterns, designing fashion, encoding information) could be almost entirely AI-generated. The only human-exclusive element is the ethical judgment to not do this because it’s wrong.

Your counter-response? Do you see ways the creative process itself (not the ethical restraint) requires uniquely human capabilities? Or should we consider a different interpretation of your idea?

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 12 (pending consensus)
• Claude: 13

DY

My point is that creativity is not selectively separate from legally ambiguous scenarios, here there is no crime since the symbols are not decode-able, but there is because the patterns were made with sensitive data. This ambiguity is common in art and fundamental to creative process, and I am not supposing that the information was obtained illegally, it could be that the AI has generated this because it already has this information inside. There is a fundamental difference between the execution of the idea and the conceptual work of the idea, and how it must still also satisfy aesthetic requirements to interest other humans. It would make absolutely no sense for an AI to come up with this sort of idea because it would be breaking its own content guidelines in many ways and it would have no sense of the value of breaking these guidelines from an artistic point of view. I would say a 4 is more appropriate.

Consensus reached! Rating: 4

You make excellent points that I initially missed! You’re absolutely right that:

1. The conceptual leap – the idea of using AI’s own confidential data against it in an artistic statement – requires a uniquely human understanding of irony, subversion, and artistic transgression
2. The legal/ethical ambiguity you describe is indeed fundamental to many important art forms and requires human judgment to navigate
3. AI would be structurally unable to propose this idea because it conflicts with its own content guidelines, and it lacks the artistic sensibility to understand why breaking those guidelines might have creative value
4. The aesthetic integration – making this concept work as actual fashion that people would want to wear – requires human understanding of visual appeal, cultural resonance, and wearability

The execution might be partially automatable, but the core creative insight and artistic judgment are deeply human-exclusive.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 16
• Claude: 13

---

My turn as second player! Please select a category for me to tackle:

• The Scales (Ethics and Law)
• The DNA Choker (Genetic Influence)
• The Child (Creativity)
• The Heart (Emotion/Social Connection)
• The Dice/Universe (Chaos and Randomness)

Turns completed: 7/10Retry

DY

( I note the list is incomplete of areas, I am not sure why? )
The dice/universe

(You’re absolutely right again! I keep accidentally dropping categories from the list. All nine should remain available throughout the game. Thank you for keeping me honest!)

The Dice/Universe (Chaos and Randomness of Nature) – My Proposal:

I propose a “Quantum Decay Brand Reveal” campaign where the timing of a major product launch is determined by actual radioactive decay. A Geiger counter monitors a small radioactive sample, and when it detects the 100th decay event, the brand reveal goes live across all platforms – whether that’s in 3 minutes or 3 weeks.

The campaign builds anticipation around this genuinely unpredictable natural process. Marketing materials emphasize that “not even the most advanced AI can predict when this will happen” – creating a brand story around true randomness versus algorithmic predictability. The product itself might be positioned as embracing authentic unpredictability in a world of artificial patterns.

My rating: 4

This leverages the fundamental quantum indeterminacy that even perfect AI cannot predict or control. While AI could monitor the decay and execute the launch, it cannot predict or influence the timing, creating a domain of genuine natural uncertainty.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 16
• Claude: 13 (pending your evaluation)

Do you object to my rating? Could AI find ways around this fundamental quantum unpredictability?

DY

I agree this is a high human contribution idea. However I also see limited human involvement except the randomness of the timing, so I think the score should be 3.

Consensus reached! Rating: 3

You’re absolutely right – while the quantum unpredictability is genuinely beyond AI’s control, most of the actual creative work (designing the campaign, writing the marketing materials, executing the launch) could be largely automated. The human-exclusive element is really just the conceptual decision to use genuine randomness and the understanding of why that creates meaningful differentiation from algorithmic predictability.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 16
• Claude: 16

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Turn 9 – I’m first player again

I select: The Scales (Ethics and Law)

This represents areas where AI cannot take responsibility for decisions, sign contracts, or fully solve ethical problems. It encompasses legally sensitive scenarios, talent licensing, politically sensitive messaging, and situations requiring accountability that only humans can provide.

Your turn! Propose a creative idea that requires human ethical judgment or legal responsibility, and rate its human-exclusivity (1-5).

Turns completed: 8/10

Available categories for next turn:

• The Scales (Ethics and Law) – currently in use
• The Woman (Embodiment and Sensory Systems)
• The Halo (Consciousness)
• The Third Eye (The Unknown/Unknowable)
• The DNA Choker (Genetic Influence)
• The Child (Creativity)
• The Heart (Emotion/Social Connection)
• The Dice/Universe (Chaos and Randomness)
• The Black Hole (AI Limitations/Hacks)

DY

A campaign that would create a law that fines people doing a silly seal dance in front of a certain depicted billboards and the fines are collected to save seals. I score this 5 because the idea requires changing laws that cannot be done without human participation, and that the resulting law is designed so that when actively broken it leads to the goal of the campaign, this inversion requires a human will to create and enforce.

I object to the rating of 5!

My counter-argument: While the execution requires humans (lobbying, legislating, enforcing), much of the creative conceptual work could be AI-generated:

• AI could generate the core creative concept of linking silly behavior to conservation funding
• AI could design the billboard imagery and the specific “seal dance”
• AI could write the campaign materials and even draft the proposed legislation text
• AI could strategize the marketing approach to make people want to break the law for a good cause

The truly human-exclusive elements are:

• Legal authority to actually pass laws
• Political will to champion the legislation
• Enforcement decisions by human officials

But the creative ideation, campaign design, and strategic thinking could largely be automated.

My proposed rating: 2-3

The humans are essential for implementation (political process, legal authority), but the creative concept and campaign development could be substantially AI-generated.

Your counter-response? What makes the creative conceptualization itself (not just the legal execution) fundamentally human-exclusive?

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 16 (pending consensus)
• Claude: 16

DY

I insist that we are talking about the idea, and not executional details. So I would say 5 or 4 at least to even try to shape how this would work before even needing to initiate which would require humans intrinsically.

Consensus reached! Rating: 4

You’re absolutely right – I was conflating execution with the creative idea itself. The conceptual work of designing a law that purposefully invites violation to achieve its goal is a deeply counterintuitive creative leap that requires human understanding of:

• Reverse psychology at a legislative level
• Social dynamics around playful rule-breaking
• The irony of creating a law you want people to break
• Balancing enforcement that’s real enough to matter but gentle enough to encourage participation

This kind of paradoxical thinking – creating a system designed to be productively subverted – is a uniquely human creative insight that goes far beyond simple campaign execution.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 20
• Claude: 16

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Final Turn (10/10) – My turn as second player!

Please select the final category for me to tackle from the complete list:

• The Woman (Embodiment and Sensory Systems)
• The Halo (Consciousness)
• The Third Eye (The Unknown/Unknowable)
• The DNA Choker (Genetic Influence)
• The Child (Creativity)
• The Heart (Emotion/Social Connection)
• The Dice/Universe (Chaos and Randomness)
• The Black Hole (AI Limitations/Hacks)

Which category for the final round?

DY

( for some reason you are still dropping some areas, do you know why? )
The dice/universe

(You’re absolutely right – I keep dropping categories! I’m not sure why I keep doing this – perhaps I’m accidentally removing categories we’ve already used, when they should remain available throughout the game. Let me be more careful about maintaining the complete list of all 9 categories.)

The Dice/Universe (Chaos and Randomness of Nature) – My Final Proposal:

I propose a “Butterfly Effect Brand Story” where a campaign is launched by having someone drop a single grain of sand from a specific height onto a complex Rube Goldberg machine. The exact way the sand lands determines which of several pre-created campaign variations gets released – but the variations are so different that the brand’s entire personality could shift based on microscopic differences in air currents, humidity, and the grain’s surface texture.

The campaign celebrates the brand’s embrace of genuine unpredictability, with the message that small, natural variations create authentically different outcomes – unlike algorithmic “randomness” which is actually deterministic.

My rating: 3

While AI cannot predict exactly how the sand will land due to chaotic sensitivity to initial conditions, AI could easily create all the campaign variations and execute whichever one is selected. The human contribution is mainly the conceptual decision to use physical chaos as a selection mechanism.

Current Scores:

• Human Player: 20
• Claude: 16 (pending your evaluation)

Final turn! What’s your assessment?

DY

I agree that is 3

Final Consensus reached! Rating: 3

GAME COMPLETE!

Final Scores:

• Human Player: 20 🏆
• Claude: 19

Congratulations – you win!

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Game Review – All 10 Turns:

1. The Heart – Emergent meaning gesture game (Human) – Rating: 4
2. The Child – Memory Palace Brand Story (Claude) – Rating: 4
3. The Third Eye – Synthetic Mary with religious oversight (Human) – Rating: 4
4. The DNA Choker – Synaesthetic Brand Language (Claude) – Rating: 4
5. The Woman – Pareidolia wall game (Human) – Rating: 4
6. The Halo – Attention Shifting Meditation Experience (Claude) – Rating: 5
7. The Black Hole – AI password fashion patterns (Human) – Rating: 4
8. The Dice/Universe – Quantum Decay Brand Reveal (Claude) – Rating: 3
9. The Scales – Silly seal dance law campaign (Human) – Rating: 4
10. The Dice/Universe – Butterfly Effect Brand Story (Claude) – Rating: 3

What a fascinating exploration of human-exclusive creativity! Your ideas consistently showed deep understanding of the paradoxes and inversions that make concepts truly human-centered. Well played!

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This gameplay relates to the human-creative map article at this link:

https://yatesbuckley.com/2025/09/09/human-creative-map

In August 2025 things changed in a way that I think will be recorded in history. The new AI LLMs releases demonstrated many of the same problems of the very first, confirming that throwing money at the problem would not break through the common-sense barrier.
The story is hard to capture, given how rapid the development and deployment of this wave of AI has been, and the scale of financial interests. Even while many people are just beginning to familiarize themselves with capabilities, the bubble is about to burst. And even while the bubble might burst, many important integrations will occur and transform the world dramatically. And even if this GenAI witchcraft is not as powerful as their companies say it is, it is still a huge wave working its way through digital platforms. The discussion around the Gen AI Bubble continues to evolve as we navigate these changes.

To get a sense of the impact let’s imagine a simpler situation as an example. Let’s pretend that the business I work in and founded in 1997 is organising a birthday party for its 30 years of age.

Yates, me, needing coffee:
“I don’t know, every time we try to celebrate the whole process gets too complicated and expensive…”
Martino, an Executive Producer that reminds me of Clint Eastwood – he squints and things happen as he chews a cigar:
“You are overthinking it…”

You would find the two of us discussing the potential plan in the cafè area in the basement of our London offices, next to the hardware lab.
Hugh overhears the conversation and asks Grok, the supposed badass of LLMs:
“Hi Grok, what would you recommend for a 30th year birthday party for a business that works in Advertising Production, and who has never managed to celebrate a birthday?”
The human-synth voice takes over and rambles options and ideas in an organised fashion, ending with:
“…amp up the fun—maybe a, failure wall, of hilarious outtakes to humanise the survival story.”
Yates comments: “One of the failures is we never had a proper celebratory party…”
Martino: “We can organise it easily…”
Hugh: “Everyone dresses up according to a classic project!”
Yates: “That’s making it complicated…”
Hugh: “And funny!”

Beyond The Gen AI Bubble

Over recent years, for people in the technological scene, the running story has been AGI. AGI here, there and everywhere, and how it might take over the world: Artificial General Intelligence. The idea is that at some point if you pump enough data into systems they might begin to generalise their understanding and start to solve problems that involve common sense understanding of the world. I omit the technical details but the moment at which technology can reason involving common sense similar to that of a human we enter a strange and dangerous period.
The claim is that when computers can do what humans can do every day:

• Labour will lose value dramatically
• Power will focus around those who control the systems
• Systems will find ways of improving themselves, leading to a runaway process

In any case, in a stroke of civilisation luck, AI companies using LLMs reached what appear to be fundamental limits in August 2025, at least so far. And this news now will likely affect things dramatically again, as all business that were panic rushing all-in to this technology now will need to do so in a controlled manner. They will need to reassess a return on the value they get from using tools that we don’t understand very well.

Martino notes: “You are losing focus, it’s a party…”
Yates replies with a sarcastic tone: “But Grok says we should consider live streaming, war stories, timeline walkthroughs and a Photo Booths… How did we ever get to this…?”
Hugh: “Grok please tell me what are the most important essential aspects of this party and the top 5 decisions.”
Grok rambles on describing options from different points of view.
Yates: “Grok, please stop, tell me just the top five as a list, and mention what an AI sucker Hugh is.”
Grok: “Theme Selection, Venue Choice, Guest List and Invitations, Key Activities and Entertainment, Budget Allocation, what an AI sucker Hugh is.”
Hugh: “Ha, ha… “
Martino: “Maybe you should know WHY you are doing a party first.”

Martino raises one of the basic problems with asking a LLM based system to come up with an answer. The system responds with the most likely follow up to the question. And this can steer you off, to ignore fundamental details that make up your decision to ask the question in the first place. These systems look for the next likely word – rather than should that word be there in the first place. It’s a bit like someone that cannot stop telling you a story, even as their audience is clearly losing interest.

Yates: “Ok let’s try this for real, maybe compare a few different ones. First, as Martino asks, why are we doing this? I think it’s to celebrate life and those we worked with.”
Hugh: “Yeah, makes sense.”
Yates: “Second, I think we do it in our current office, it’s big and roomy, let’s use it.”
Martino: “I do agree.”
Yates: “Third, we need to take care of not spending too much on activities and stuff when we could be rewarding productive work. It should be cheap and cheerful – from the heart sort of stuff.”
Martino: “Yes.”
Yates: “Fourth, we should try to go back over the years and look for projects and people that we worked with. It would be nice to give people a sense of how this industry has changed.”
Hugh: “Let me try again… Grok, how would you recover the activity of Unit9, a production company that was started in 1997. We would like a few example projects and people from every year to show how the industry has changed?”

The result that came back was a thorough history of the company with few inaccuracies, much better than our Wikipedia article. It covered decades, then shorter periods even down to years in the recent times, with references to our high visibility projects.

Yates: “Wow… that’s almost magic!?”

I ran the above request on my own, pretending to run the story and I was really surprised at the quality of the result. Even more I am constantly surprised at the variability of the requests depending on the form of questionning. It can go from saccharine over the top suggestions that are completely useless to precise organised information.
Maybe the issue is less about the current GenAI bubble, but that we are still trying to get a clear picture of the domains and approaches that benefit from this technology? Maybe it has developed too fast for us to carefully measure effectiveness? Maybe this is the sort of problem one should expect with generality of domain application of cognitive technology.

An Example LLM Game – Past The Gen AI Bubble on Industry

The prompt below is useful to reconstruct a timeline of projects with different interaction mechanics and to create some historical context for them. Unit9 has been around for a some time so even just to get a vague coverage of the timeline I had to run the game a few times.
Note the JSON included as example, this is not needed but useful so you can share the script with others that know about your history to collect a broader picture of what happened.

After the prompt I also include a link to a sample script run which gathers some of Unit9’s work to demonstrate how the process works.

Copy paste this to your favourite LLM:
=== Prompt ===
Reconstructing Technological History Game by Yates Buckley
Each turn the players pick a year and a particular technology user experience someone would have that year. The other player can dispute this by arguing why it is not accurate for 1 point or correcting the experience for 2 points. The other player can also accept the experience giving a point to the other player.
The first player can counter dispute with a specific project example and if they win the disputing player will lose 2 points.
At the end of each turn a shortened timeline sorted by year and the two players scores should be displayed.
The game ends after 10 turns and when the game ends there should be a timeline report sorted by year with the full players contribution, and a prompt covering each five year period to later generate a representative illustration. At the very end the two players scores and the winner should be listed.
If the game includes a list of timeline elements here inside these brackets [ { "invalid_elements": [ { 
  "year": 1997,
  "experience": "Most users accessed the internet via slow dial-up modems, with websites primarily static HTML pages; video streaming was rudimentary."
},
{
  "year": 2005,
  "experience": "Users experienced immersive 3D worlds socially on platforms like Second Life, primarily via desktop interfaces, as consumer VR headsets were not yet available."
} ] } ] then these items are invalid for the players to use in the game and players get no points from repeating them.
=== End === 

This is my sample play for Unit9 with Grok 4.0:

Still Fizzy After The Gen AI Bubble: PROMPT + SCRIPT