Introduction: Moments of Enlightenment A traveler’s guide to the future In the weeks and months that followed my first encounter with GPT-4, my excitement only grew. In between Zoom calls, I’d give GPT-4 a prompt: Reid: Write a sonnet about sonnets. GPT-4: Sonnets are poems of fourteen lines That follow a strict rhyme scheme and meter They often praise or question love’s designs Or muse on beauty, art, or nature’s features Some sonnets follow the Petrarchan form With an octave and a sestet to contrast Two themes or arguments, or to perform A turn or shift from problem to resolve at last Some sonnets follow the Shakespearean style With three quatrains and a couplet to conclude They often use witty language and beguile The reader with a twist or a surprise in mood But whatever form or rhyme they choose to adopt Sonnets are poems that challenge and delight  the thought OK, also during Zoom calls, I’d give GPT-4 a prompt: Reid: As large language model AIs are trained on the whole internet, in what ways are their outputs false in Adorno’s sense, where the whole is the false? GPT-4 (edited for length): To answer this question, we need to first understand what Adorno meant by this provocative claim, and then examine how it applies to the nature and limitations of large language model AIs. Adorno, a prominent member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, was deeply concerned with the effects of modern capitalism, mass culture, and rationalization on human society and culture. He argued that the logic 7