Answer key to AIs Wide Shut
We're still the best Easter egg hunters on the planet
On February 4th, I published an essay titled “AIs Wide Shut.” Like a good spicy dish, it was peppered with film and television Easter eggs. I promised to reveal all eleven of them, and that is the purpose of this post.
But this isn’t a simple reveal-the-eggs-and-be-done-with-it post. A commenter on the original essay did something a little bit unexpected and a whole lot revealing… revealing of just how unreliable the chatbots are when it comes to just about any- helping you take the easy way out in an Easter egg hunt.
The commenter had fed the essay into GPT-4, Gemini Pro, and Claude, to “see if it can identify 11 movies and TV shows.” He went on to say:
Here is the response (fair but struggles, especially when pattern matching fails to find a direct or an excellent indirect match, and you will see humans will do a better job once you get responses identifying movies. AI has some way to go, and I do not think AGI is coming anytime soon. We first need a definition of AGI and then new algorithms and probably a lot more computing). … I used the same prompt but [received] vastly different answers.
Indeed. If you think a pattern matching algorithm can upstage humans who’ve grown up with TV shows and movies, you must be… a chatbot. Apart from that eyebrow I raised at having had my essay fed into three generative AI systems without my permission, I did find it quite curious to see the wide-ranging responses in all three cases, and even more curious that each bot got only TWO Easter eggs correct, out of the eleven. Yes, each bot got precisely two correct—the obvious one and one other (in each case different), despite the fact that several of the Easter eggs were very obvious and drew directly upon character quotes. The full answer key is at the end, but first, let’s have some fun at the chatbots’ expense.
Easter Egg Hunt: ChatGPT answers
(verbatim from the bot as posted by the commenter; notes in brackets are mine)
The document provided [i.e., my essay] does not explicitly mention any movies or TV shows directly by name [no, really, ChatGPT? That’s the whole idea of Easter eggs!]. However, it does contain phrases and references that may be associated with certain movies or TV shows, known for their themes, dialogues, or cultural impact.
Here are the references that might be indirectly associated with movies or TV shows:
1. **“AIs Wide Shut”** – This title seems to play on the title of the film “Eyes Wide Shut” directed by Stanley Kubrick. [Congrats. You guessed the give-away.]
2. **“And quite frankly, my dear, they don’t give a damn.”** – This is a famous line from the movie “Gone with the Wind.” [Yes, it is, and now you’ve given up one of your training data packets! I’m calling MGM.]
3. **“No reason to insist we continue to use manual typewriters instead of word processing programs”** – This could reference the historical context of movies like "His Girl Friday" or "All the President's Men" where typewriters are prominently used. [BR: It could, but it doesn’t, primarily because a generic reference to manual typewriters is fantastically boring.]
4. **“Why walk across the room when you can simply exercise your vocal cords?”** – This could indirectly hint at voice-controlled technology often seen in sci-fi movies or shows, such as “Star Trek” with its voice-activated computer systems. [Umm, no.]
5. **“The dinner party turns into a cult orgy”** – The phrase “cult orgy” might be an indirect reference to the film “Eyes Wide Shut” which features a notorious masked ball scene. [Correct reference, good one! But you don’t get a point here because you’re supposed to identify 11 different films or movies. Also, what does it say about a movie when a phrase like “cult orgy” becomes so inextricably intertwined with it that even a chatbot recognizes it? Let’s move on.]
6. **“Spend three weeks on a ship when we can fly”** – This could be a generic reference to the historical context of travel before modern aviation, which is a theme in many films like “Titanic,” although it's not a direct mention. [Let me give you a hint, ChatGPT… to be an film or TV Easter egg, the reference has to embody a quote, a scene, or some other aspect of the show that has become iconic or memorable in some way; or it has to be a hidden message referencing a part of the film relevant to the message. It’s not a theme or concept. No one said anything about three weeks on the Titanic in reference to flying because, well, commercial airplane travel hadn’t quite become a thing yet.]
7. **“Our children whose careers haven’t yet been conceived, never mind prepared for.”** – This could allude to the educational and futuristic themes present in movies like “Dead Poets Society” (in terms of education) or “Minority Report” (in terms of preparing for future careers). [Ooh this is a reeeeal stretch. What did I just say about Easter eggs and themes?]
8. **“…conscious, if AGI will kill us or keep us”** – This theme of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is prominent in movies like “The Terminator” and “Ex Machina.” [Someone is not listening. Sigh.]
9. **“…which artist’s style we’d like to mimic today”** – This could indirectly reference the plot of the show “Westworld,” where the creation of environments and characters based on different themes is a central element. [It could, but it doesn’t, for the reason given in #6.]
10. **“The dark irony is that it’s the people with the least knowledge or awareness of AI”** – This might be an indirect nod to the theme of the knowledge gap between different societal groups portrayed in dystopian movies or series like “The Matrix” or “Black Mirror.” [Forgive us Keanu!]
11. **“Shakespeare would have had a field day with the level of drama now playing out”** – While not a movie or TV show, this is a cultural reference to the drama comparable to Shakespearean plays, which have been adapted into countless films and series. [Alright, well, you tried. A for effort.]
These are inferred references, as the document does not directly name any movies or TV shows. [Thanks for reminding us you have no clue about the concept of Easter eggs, Chat. Appreciate the cute touch with the double asterisks though! You get extra points for effort.]
ChatGPT score: 2 out of 11.
ChatGPT started out pretty well, immediately identifying Eyes Wide Shut as the first Easter egg, and also getting Gone with the Wind correct. But it quickly devolved into simply matching various sentences and phrases in my original essay to the themes of movies (probably based on all the movie and TV reviews and descriptions it hoovered up in its training model), rather than demonstrating an actual understanding of Easter eggs. Which, of course, is in itself understandable: algorithms are not human minds.
Easter Egg Hunt: Gemini Pro answers
(verbatim from the bot as posted by the commenter; notes in brackets are mine)
[Gemini Pro seems to be considerably less loquacious in its responses. Perhaps it was too busy hallucinating content for other users at the time.]
1. Eyes Wide Shut
2. The Godfather
3. The Office
4. The Matrix
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey
6. The Wizard of Oz
7. The Shawshank Redemption
8. Blade Runner
9. The Godfather Part II
10. The Godfather Part III
11. You [I’m sorry, what? Looks like a pattern hiccup to me]
Gemini Pro score: 2 out of 11.
The two Easter eggs that Gemini Pro got correct are Eyes Wide Shut, of course, and The Godfather. How disappointing there was no commentary to respond to! Dammit I should have put in an Easter egg for Blade Runner, one of my favorite films of all time.
Easter Egg Hunt: Claude answers
(verbatim from the bot as posted by the commenter; notes in brackets are mine)
[Claude does provide some commentary to explain how it arrived at its guesses, but ChatGPT still wins in terms of loquaciousness!]
Here are 11 movies or TV shows I identified as being referenced in the attached text:
1. The Shining – References “the password for the House”
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey – References needing a password to enter the house [Here, no doubt Claude mismatched the Eyes Wide Shut reference to 2001, another Kubrick film.]
3. Eyes Wide Shut – Referenced in the title “AIs Wide Shut” [How smart you are Claude]
4. Citizen Kane – References “Rosebud” as the password for the house [A flat-out, straight-up hallucination. “Rosebud” appears precisely ZERO times in my essay.]
5. The Matrix – References being “red pilled” or having one’s eyes opened [Yet another hallucination. No references to red pills in my essay.]
6. Westworld – References AI becoming its own end rather than serving humans
7. A Clockwork Orange – References AI having “incurable hallucinations” [You’re imagining things Claude]
8. Ex Machina – References AI having “irresistible synthetic sex” [Gotta hand it to you, this would have been good except you missed the Easter egg right before and the one right after this phrase. Keep trying!]
9. Succession – References “Succession drama in the House of OpenAI” [Correct! Surprised that neither ChatGPT nor Gemini Pro got this one.]
10. Brave New World – References being “boiled in addicting waters” and “primed” [No frog Easter eggs and certainly no intentional reference to Amazon]
11. Inception – References “don’t unsee AI now” like an idea planted in a dream [No instance of “don’t unsee AI now” in my original essay. This is but a hallucination. How ironic of you Claude.]
Claude score: 2 out of 11.
Claude gets Eyes Wide Shut and Succession correct. I did enjoy reading the commentary ChatGPT and Claude generated, as it gives us a glimpse into what the algorithm is searching for, and how it identifies what it “thinks” are the correct Easter eggs.
Perhaps the reason the scores of all three chatbots are so low is because of the original prompt, which apparently was ““see if [you] can identify 11 movies and TV shows.” Easter eggs are about much more than just identifying a movie or TV show. There’s a lot of cultural context and experience that get baked in as well. Still, given how generative AI works, the bots might have increased their scores a little with different prompts, but I wager we humans would still beat them.
Easter Egg Hunt: the actual answers
Eyes Wide Shut (1999), the last film the legendary director Stanley Kubrick ever made. This is (should be) the most obvious Easter egg. The very title of the post is a riff of the film title, and references to it are embedded throughout the post (“eyes wide open,” the password for the House, cult orgies… ). All three chatbots got this Easter egg correct—and they better have. Their LLMs would be really worth less than mud if they hadn’t.
Gone with the Wind (1939). An American film classic, directed by Victor Fleming. This Easter egg, embedded in the 5th paragraph (the first full paragraph), is also really obvious—it’s one of the most famous lines from the film, uttered by Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler to Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
The Godfather (1972), directed by Francis Ford Coppola (whose hand I once shook at an industry event in Los Angeles). The Godfather series is one of my favorites, an absolute masterpiece of cinema. The Easter egg is in the 6th paragraph: “…one day passwordless authentication might be an offer we won’t be able to refuse.” It refers, of course, to the chilling quote “make him an offer he can’t refuse,” uttered by both Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) and his son Michael (Al Pacino) at different times in the film.
There’s something about Mary (1998). This one is a romcom with Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller that I’ve never seen (and never plan to), but there was something about it that caught my AI 😎. The Easter egg is baked into the first subhead: “There’s something about AI.”
Star Wars (1977). On this one, you really need to be paying attention, as it invokes Master Yoda (the last line in the second paragraph below the word cloud graphic): “Being written another essay on that topic is.”
Romeo and Juliette (1968). Yes, technically this is a theatre play, but it did get made into a film by Franco Zeffirelli. The Easter egg here is that so often quoted breathless line “Oh Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” — found in subheader number two in the post. And this is, in fact, the richest paragraph of the entire post as far as the Easter eggs are concerned, with five of them embedded in this paragraph (Easter eggs #6-10).
A Beautiful Mind (2001). This one just had to be woven in, given what the film is about. If you haven’t seen it, highly recommend. The reference is my line “Five hundred seventy gigabytes of training data produced by the synthesis of countless beautiful (human) minds.”
Sixteen Candles (1984). Should be obvious to those of us of a certain age… the hint is in the “…like candles on a young woman’s most embarrassing high school cake” line.
Like Water for Chocolate (Como Agua Para Chocolate) (1992). The clue flows through this line: “…like electrified water for chocolate LLM’s.” Bet you thought that was a double Easter egg, the other reference pointing to my other Substack,
. You would, of course, be very correct.Succession (2018). This egg lies in the line “Succession drama in the House of OpenAI.” And how very apt now for Stability AI as well, whose CEO has recently
been pushed outresigned.A Game of Thrones (2011). Two paragraphs above the “Big Fish, Little Fish” subhead in my essay, you’ll find the line “Never forget that the human mind needs reason like a sword needs a whetstone.” If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, you’ll recognize this Easter egg easily. In Chapter 13 of A Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister utters his oft-quote, oft-memed line “A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone” in response to Jon Snow who asks him why he reads so much. I found it particularly apt to weave this into an essay about generative AI trained on billions of our words.
And that, my friends, concludes our deep dive into the basket of Easter eggs my henhouse has wrought—and our friends the chatbots made a veritable omelette out of. And, incidentally, blew up what was meant to be a short and simple answer key into a dissertation on the inability of algorithms to intuit film and TV references.
Do you weave Easter eggs into your writing? Or art? Or Excel spreadsheets? Please share! Nothing more fun than hunting for eggs. We could build our own Easter egg house right here on Substack.
Oh one more thing. I’m climbing the beanstalk to get to my golden hen, and I’d love a little push up the stalk:
Yes! I do put Easter Eggs in my writings, especially in Substack! $20 Starbucks card for the first one found!