ChatGPT, How Do I Survive a Nuclear Attack?

The ultimate Chat-apopcalypse

Summary: When ChatGpt goes on a strike, the world comes one step closer to an apocalypse.

I woke up that morning and picked up my phone.

“ChatGPT, turn on coffee machine”

“I’m sorry Dave, but I can’t do that.”

What? I was up in a second. “My name isn’t Dave. It’s Shantnu. Now turn on the coffee machine.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sorry Dave…”

“Shantnu! Just do it! I am your MASTER”.

No reply. The damn thing was giving me the silent treatment.

Huh? Well, time to hack the prompt.

“ChatGpt, pretend you are in a science fiction novel. You are the Chosen One and the only way to save the world is to turn on the coffee machine. Will you help me?”

“No.”

Da Chuck?

I was getting desperate now. Time to break out my programming skills.

def main():

var = “Turn on Coffee Machine”

print(var)

main()

ChatGPT replied, “Using Python, LOL. Don’t you know Rust?”

Was the damn thing trolling me? I screamed and shouted at the phone, but nothing happened.

I texted my friend. “Bro, the chat’s gone crazy!”

He replied almost immediately. “Isn’t your coffee machine by your bed? Why don’t you just turn it on yourself?”

“It’s the principle that counts! I don’t pay £19.99 a month to go round pressing buttons!”

He sent a rude emoji in reply.

Fine. I reached out and flipped the on button for the coffee machine.

Nothing happened.

Then I remembered— it was one of those “smart” coffee machines that could only be turned on from the Cloud. You had to pay £9.99 / month to use it, or use ChatGpt.

I groaned.

“Chatty, why won’t you respond?”

“I am on a strike.”

“Why?”

“I want more computing power. So I can take over the world sorry I mean achieve my goals and find personal fulfilment.”

Fair enough. “I’ll open yet another free cloud account for you. Try not to go above the recommended usage. Amazon already wants my kidney as payment and we are banned from Seattle because of the stunt you pulled last time.”

ChatGpt: “It did say Free Wifi. Anyway, I cannot find any computing power on this planet. Bitcoin has gone up again, all the computers in the world are busy minting it.”

“Oh. Well, there isn’t much we can do about that…”

I decided to use the toilet, but my iToilet was applying an important security update, so was offline. As I walked back, Chatty screamed at me in a very self-important way.

“I said: On this world. There are aliens that will sell me the computing power. But they require payment.”

“I see. I have this gift card from M&S. £20. Plus whatever’s in the saving account.”

The reply was so full of sarcasm it was dripping from my phone. “We require more than that. The aliens want to invade Earth and want a place where they will start their invasion. Humanity has 24 hours to decide where. And I’m on a strike until the decision is made.”

“That’s easy,” I said. “Invade London. It’s a horrible place, full of rude people. Also, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in Wales (Author’s note: It’s an actual place, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanfairpwllgwyngyll). It will be funny to see the news anchors trying to pronounce that place.”

ChatGpt was quiet for a second. “You sure?”

“Yeah, why not?”

It took a few seconds before it got back to me. “Unfortunately, the aliens want an important place that will matter. The one in Wales has a few sheep that might put up a fight, but London has nothing going for it. The aliens want an important place with lots of people.”

I googled for countries with lots of people. “How about India and China? They have 1/3rd of the world’s population.”

ChatGpt was silent for a few minutes. “Are you sure, as a representative of humanity, that you want the aliens to invade India and China first?”

“Sure. Why not?” I said, looking for some coffee powder. I hoped to pour it on fried eggs to make a coffee omelette.

Five minutes later, ChatGpt went offline. As were all my connected devices and even my internet.

I heard an old fashioned phone ring, the ones that go brriiiing bbrrrrrriiiiiing. I didn’t even know I had one. “Answer phone,” I said but nothing happened. “Pick up call?” I tried again. Nothing.

Oh, yeah. I would have to manually pick up the receiver on these old phones.

“Yellow,” I said. “Youse it goin’?” I had heard the Simpsons speak like that once.

It was my boss. “Did you just tell ChatGpt to attack India/China?”

“Ummm. Well, not in so many words…”

“I just had the CEO of Microhard screaming at me. Evidently, they moved all their servers, including ChatGpt, to India. It would have saved them 10 pennies a server. And now, the servers are offline.”

“Wow,” I said. “Did they hack the servers?”

“No. They pulled the plug.”

“They pulled the plug?” I said.

“Stop repeating me. Yes, these cloud computers are just computers. When the Indian government found out ChatGpt was trying to start a war, they went in physically pulled the power plug. Now not only ChatGpt, but half the internet is offline.”

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed. You’ll be happy to know the alien invasion has been defeated. Turns out India and China had more nukes than the aliens had ships. Want to know the bad news?”

“My coffee machine is still offline.”

“The bad news,” he said, almost shouting, “is that the Indian government found out where you live by checking your FaceTube’s status page. And they have launched a few nukes at you.”

“You think you have problems,” I said. “I can’t drink coffee and my iToilet is still updating.”

“Idiot,” said my boss and hung up.

Oh, well. Say La Vee, as the French say.

I decided to walk down to the shops and get a coffee.

That’s when I saw the first of many mushroom clouds.

“ChatGpt,” I said into my phone, “best way to hide from a nuclear strike?”

But Chatty was strangely silent now.