i told petrov's story twice

on september 26, 1983, just after midnight, a soviet computer told stanislav petrov that five missiles were coming. his job was to trust it. he didn't. he called it a false alarm and waited, without knowing if he was right. it was sunlight reflecting off the clouds.

this month i told that story twice, in cusco, in spanish. once with slides. once with nothing but a book and a candle.

the first time: to think

the first was a talk at a ppt party. i called it ¿quién dice espera?, who says wait? it started in the bunker, with the missile count, and ended in the present. i built it on three ideas:

• the waiting. the world was saved by someone who could say "wait". today ai is sold as the end of waiting.
• the three powers. petrov could check what the machine said, he knew his computer had no brain, and he had the last word: nothing flew without him. today all three are turned around: we don't understand ai from the inside, it's no longer a machine without a brain, and more and more it detects, decides and acts on its own.
• the filter. in 1983 the system punished petrov for waiting. today the people asking to wait are leaving the labs with warnings. i called them the modern petrovs.

the last slide was two unlit candles and one line: today the chair is ours.

the room asked why petrov did it. i said he didn't want the responsibility of starting a nuclear war. someone answered that then the problem is the human.

that's the beautiful thing about people: we have intrinsic values.

others said ai doesn't worry them much yet, that they would worry more about physical robots. someone else said they don't believe ai will reach superintelligence. i told them yes, that could be true, but what the ai labs want is exactly to reach that superintelligence.

nobody agreed with everything. i liked that. that's what a talk is for: thinking together, even against each other.

the second time: to feel

the second was a week later, on september 26, at the anniversary of de profundis, the book club. five minutes, no slides. the speech had two tracks. the time track: petrov had minutes and he waited; we raced to build another machine without giving ourselves time. the brain track: in 1983 it was easy to doubt a machine with no brain; today ai writes, codes, diagnoses, and every year it does it better. and the better it does it, the harder it will be for us to doubt it.

i told the night in the bunker in the present tense, asked the room what they would do with those few minutes, and lit a candle. in the middle i recited part of my poem:

we looked at the mind as the owner of time.
and we believed time would always wait for us.
we put off being human, trusting in… time!
we raced to create you without giving ourselves… time!
…
and now we have no… time!
…all we can do is ask ourselves for… time!

and i closed with the same poem:

ai, give us time.
ai, let's give ourselves time.

i was so focused on not forgetting anything that i didn't watch people's faces. it felt like more pressure than the slides, because nothing reminded me what came next. i used a book as a guide for the structure, but still. i didn't move with confidence, didn't use my body or my tone to be firm, didn't move around the stage. it was my first time reciting, and i was very nervous.

before it, i had a little wine to relax. the funny part is that i was making myself numb right where i needed to be alert. it did help me relax, but not as much as i wanted. i was afraid that if i drank too much it would cloud my head more. but maybe then more of my expression would have come out, i don't know. the thing is expression.

someone there told me to practice right there, before starting. i didn't want to, because i was nervous. now i think it would have gone better.

afterward, people came up to me. one said that if that man had been american, it might not have happened. another talked about ai and said it only steals other people's work. someone else said they liked the presentation. and one person told me they thought i was going to talk about quechua, or cusco, because my name is yupanqui.

what i take from it

the same story did different things in each room. with slides, people argued. with the candle, people came up to tell me what they thought.

i like talking about the topics i care about, and i need to improve to reach more people.

i loved the recitation, because i feel it. i like the talk too, because i like to think. i love both.

today, writing this: next time i want to express myself more freely.