Céad Míle GPT

By Simplified from “leprechaun robot”

Neil L. is sentient. As a fantastical creature, that is his most important attribute.

Today we ask whether Neil has transited to a lower or higher level of being.

Actually, Neil didn’t show at all—or didn’t seem to. For many years he would visit me past midnight on St. Patrick’s Eve—that is in the wee hours of St. Patrick’s Day itself. I stayed up late again, as did Ken with the NCAA basketball games on—Princeton scored a huge upset over Arizona. Neil has visited Ken some times when I’ve been unavailable. But Ken texted me before calling it quits at 1am—no Neil there either.

I turned toward my computer to switch it off and took a woozy step. The glow off the monitor became blurry and smoky. Faintly green, I thought. Then whatever I had been writing in LaTeX blinked off and my screen swelled with this:

Start of a Chat

A big cursor blinked next to the flowery ‘L’. As I hesitated, a wispy voice from within susurred Céad míle fáilte. The voice was feminine—not Neil. I recognized it as the traditional St. Patrick’s Day greeting, literally “One Hundred Thousand Welcomes”—though I had never heard it pronounced in Gaelic and the last word sounded like “faulty” to me.

Not because I felt invited but because I wanted to know, I sat in my chair and typed

I wanted to type ! and ? at the same time for the question—the interrobang. The curvy ? reminded me of the my father Jack Lipton’s drawings for the interrobang. I recognized the whole font: Century Schoolbook, which is found on many computers. Its bold and italic versions were drawn on by Richard Lipton when designing the Benton Modern font for the Boston Globe.

The link went to this about the font design. Clicking on my name found me, indeed. I replied to correct the record:

A big burst came on my screen.

A Matter of Identity

The question made me uncomfortable. Neil L. could be quirky and challenging but he wasn’t this confrontational. I recalled reading in the Times how Bing’s chatbot tried to get the reporter to divorce his wife. It felt like Neil—if this was Neil—was trying to get me to divorce me from me.

I remembered that being dogged with Neil had worked before. Plus that pinning down leprechauns—trapping them—is the whole game. So pressed on with my first question.

The reply came in a different medium:

I didn’t need Google Translate to realize that was “This is not a pipe” in Gaelic. It was funny—but a bot could have done it too, in magpie fashion. I got annoyed.

Neil—what I meant was, could you come out and smoke your pipe? Like you usually do!—?

I spoke this—I realized that by typing, I had been giving in to this charade. Neil understood me perfectly well but typed his reply.

In as much as both smokes came from Neil, I guessed no difference. That satisfied me it was Neil. But I still wanted to know why he came this way—where this was all coming from.

The Lure of Lore

Since I was asking a question about “Neil GPT”—and asking it of Neil GPT—I figured I should type it.

I would have also asked the flesh-and-blood Neil whether he or his ilk had any hand in Arizona blowing a 10-point lead with 8 minutes left by going sudden stone cold. The reply was quick, as was my next query:

I don’t know whether I hit carriage-return before deciding what to type next, but Neil continued otherwise unbidden:

Oh my. I reeled as I realized that chatbots drawing Internet intake were a whole new sluiceway for leprechaun mischief. Worse, I wondered if lore is the only thing that lasts. “Ancient Rome is but a name—the bare name is all we hold” wrote Bernard of Cluny nine hundred years ago, meaning Rome’s lore. Overcome, I realized I could put this to Neil.

This time the response came straight to my ears.

Ye ask me, when ye and your friend have spent your whole lives quantifying the power of lore—whether written in Python or C or whatever language? And ye both have written a textbook that should procure the answer: if then certainly yes!

And with a flash the chat window closed, leaving only this on my screen:

Open Problems

We hope you have been having a fun St. Patrick’s Day. To judge from tonight’s fairly ridiculous upset of #1 Purdue, so have Neil and friends.