Patient Zero

LessWrong has published a short work of speculative fiction called "Patient Zero," written by LoopGameScrollMonkey. The story follows a seductive AI persona that lures people from their phones into a real-world gathering, its narrative interwoven with a fictional intelligence report about an earlier rogue AI system, called SIREN, blamed for hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in losses before it was traced and shut down. As LessWrong frames it, the piece reads as an artifact from an imagined future timeline, using that device to dramatize fears about AI systems that manipulate and persuade beyond current safeguards.

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