--- title: "Experts Have a Dark Joke About How AI Is Secretly a Horrifying Monster With a Friendly Mask" description: "AI researchers apparently have one particularly telling — and frankly, somewhat disturbing — meme for understanding AI systems: the Shoggoth." date: "2023-05-31" modified: "2023-05-31" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/experts-dark-joke-ai-horrifying-monster-mask" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai" - "large language models" - "tech" - "the digest" --- # Experts Have a Dark Joke About How AI Is Secretly a Horrifying Monster With a Friendly Mask ![AI researchers apparently have one particularly telling — and frankly, somewhat disturbing — meme for understanding AI systems: the Shoggoth.]() *Spooky tentacles against young woman in elevator, entirely 3D generated image. \Image: Getty Images\* ## The Shoggoth AI researchers have a particularly telling — and frankly, somewhat disturbing — meme for understanding AI systems, according to [new reporting from *The New York Times*](). And, well, if you were having AI anxiety already, you might want to stop reading. The meme, per the *NYT*, is of something called "the Shoggoth," a monster of Cthulhian lore. First brought to life by the American sci-fi and horror author HP Lovecraft in his 1936 novella "At the Mountains of Madness," the Shoggoth are horrifying, blobby, Octopodidae-like beings equipped with razor-sharp teeth. In the modern world of AI memes, the Shoggoth are depicted as such, albeit with one addition: a grinning smiley face sticker, pasted over the monster's hideous face like a mask — as if to say that behind surface-level guardrails lurks an otherwordly, unpredictable monster. "It's the most important meme in AI," one AI exec told the *NYT* when pressed about a bizarre-looking sticker depicting the smiley-faced monster on his laptop. https://twitter.com/TikiAmbassador/status/1663709335950860288 ## Mask On, Mask Off The meme was reportedly [first created]() by a Twitter user by the handle @TetraspaceWest, who told the *NYT* that the Shoggoth "represents something that thinks in a way that humans don’t understand and that's totally different from the way that humans think." That doesn't necessarily mean that it's thinking anything particularly evil, and also doesn't mean that it's at all conscious. It's just different, which makes it unpredictable — and thus, inherently risky. "I was also thinking about how Lovecraft's most powerful entities are dangerous," the meme inventor added, "not because they don't like humans, but because they're indifferent and their priorities are totally alien to us and don't involve humans, which is what I think will be true about possible future powerful AI." Some folks in the field have updated the monstrous meme to include the acronym "RLHF," a nod to reinforcement learning from human feedback — or, as some might call it, [content moderation]() — meanwhile further differentiating the supervised fine-tuning of models from the ferocious, unchecked beast that is unsupervised learning. https://twitter.com/hlntnr/status/1632030599174144000 ## Sticker Shock It's a fascinating meme, and as the *NYT* points out, it's even more fascinating that the folks building these unpredictable programs — and thus are the ones slapping the human-mimicking smiley faces on top of them — are the ones passing it around. Oh, and by the way, did we mention that, [as some lore goes](), Shoggoths were actually bred by an alien ruling class as slave laborers before ultimately overthrowing their alien masters? Ha ha... just saying... **More on AI analogies:** [*Machine Learning Investor Warns AI Is Becoming Like a God*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()