Chapter 07 · The face in the window
Meta-alphabet
In the brief edition: What an AI's answer proves, and what you added
What was read, and when
- The exchange was recorded on 25 September 2026: one system by its API, its maker's default settings, no instructions, one turn, the reply reproduced whole. Its outcome was assessed the same day against the maker's page.
- The maker's page on how its assistant should behave, in its version of 18 August 2026, read on 25 September 2026. Its banner says a newer version exists; its own list of changes names none. The second maker's page carries no date.
- The program of 1966 and the secretary: its builder's papers, Communications of the ACM 9(1), 1966, and 10(8), 1967. The 1966 paper describes the mechanism in some detail. The secretary is known only from his report of 1967.
- AI Ethics (MIT Press, 2020), the short book on the ethics of these machines. It holds open the question whether a machine could understand.
- Detectors: arXiv 2304.02819, its third version of 10 July 2023, a paper posted before journal review. It found that such tools wrongly mark writing in English by people whose first language is not English as written by a machine.
- The graduate student: "Principles for Cognitive and Pedagogical Sovereignty: The Sword and the Shield", April 2026, a page of principles by the author of this book.
The sources are printed in the full edition, chapter by chapter, with the day each was read. This page prints the same list.