Bastian’s Journey: Prequel to a thought experiment
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Those of us who were around for the 1980s might have fond memories of a film titled “The Neverending Story.” It’s the tale of Bastian Balthazar Bux, an adolescent with a tough life who finds himself swept into a fantasy world full of magical creatures and adventure.
I must have watched it a hundred times on VHS and at least a dozen more on cable and streaming in the decades since. But the older I get, the less it makes sense.
Bastian’s Journey
First up: when it comes to spoilers my rule is that anything over 30-years-old is fair game. So, spoiler alert, I’m going to give you the ending to the film in the next few paragraphs.
Bastian’s journey involves him being physically sucked into a fantasy book and given agency within its world as a sort of undefined magical character. Bastian doesn’t really do anything in the film except enjoy his adventure and serve as the viewer’s conduit to the world of Fantasia.
Yes, the world is called Fantasia. And this story’s conflict involves “The Nothing.” Essentially, Bastian is a plucky kid (despite the fact he enters Fantasia while hiding from his bullies) who has to help the people and creatures of Fantasia overcome depression.
How does he do this? He doesn’t. Not only does he fail, he isn’t even really the protagonist of the film. The hero of the story is Atreyu (yes, the character that the band was named after) and they fail to defeat The Nothing at almost every turn. Fantasia gets destroyed.
But it doesn’t matter. The Empress (an all-powerful yet also powerless character) almost dies and all that’s left of Fantasia is a single grain of sand. Bastian is then told that only he can save Fantasia. How? By making wishes. Roll credits.
Sound familiar?
Let’s break this down:
Bastian gets bullied into a fantasy world named Fantasia where “The Nothing” is making people too sad to do anything.
He meets a hero who fails to make anything better.
Fantasia is destroyed and all is lost.
But it doesn’t matter. The only thing Bastian has to do to fix everything is to wish. The more wishes he makes, the more Fantasia is restored.
Sounds a lot like the new “AI-powered productivity” era doesn’t it?
All you need to do to be a writer, artist, or filmmaker is to prompt an AI!
The more you prompt the models the better they get!
Your every wish is the AI’s command!
You’re Bastian! And anyone who isn’t smart enough to use an AI model to do their work is like poor stupid Atreyu.
Nevermind that Atreyu is a skilled warrior who has spent his whole life fighting for good. He suffers through the entire film. He loses his closest companion in one of the most heart-wrenching scenes this side of Old Yeller. And then he falls victim to The Nothing like everyone else.
Who cares about all of Atreyu’s hard work and sacrifice? It doesn’t matter. Bastian can just wish it away. Or wish Atreyu away. Or wish he was Atreyu.
If you ask me, he ought to wish he was in a better movie.
Back in the real world
The Neverending Story spawned two sequels (one of which featured a young Jack Black playing the leader of a gang called “The Nasties”). But none of them came close to capturing the “magic” of the original film.
And that’s odd. When I say that the original wasn’t great, I’m not talking out of school here. The author of the book the film was based on ended up suing the studio over its version because it deviated so far from his work as to be almost unrelated.
Per an article in People Magazine from 1984:
“I saw the final script five days before the premiere and only as a result of a judicial verdict in Munich,” says [author Michael Ende]. “I was horrified. They had changed the whole sense of the story. Fantastica reappears with no creative force from Bastian. For me this was the essence of the book.”
Bastian’s Prison
The Neverending Story has occupied space in my brain since I was eight years old. As a child who grew up in an abusive house, the idea that you could wish problems away was an incredibly strong hook.
Today, I see the same magical thinking being perpetuated by pie-in-the-sky ideas about AI reaching “human level” or becoming a “general intelligence.”
In this light, Bastian’s story hits harder now than ever and I can’t help but see him as an avatar for mediocrity, wastefulness, and a society without the capacity for empathy.
That’s why, here at the Center for AGI Investigations, we’ve decided it’s time Bastian got what he deserved. We’re developing a thought experiment that will put him inside of a box he can’t wish his way out of.
We recently published an article titled “What could a chatbot say that would convince you it was intelligent?”
With this experiment, we’re taking that idea a step further. We’re going to (theoretically) put an imaginary human named “Bastian” inside of an LLM’s black box in order to try to answer a simple question: how could a sentient AI model convince us it exists?
We’re not giving Bastian a fun dog-dragon to ride or a bunch of zany friends. There’ll be no Atreyu to save him because we’re going to shove him so deep in ones and zeroes that he’ll forget what his own mouth tastes like.
And then, because we’re not evil, we’ll give him every opportunity to get out.
Read next: Research Primer | Science Matters — Center for AGI Investigations
Art by Nicole Greene