Are You Sure?

In Are You Sure?, I give form to my doubt toward AI accelerationism and its promises of continual evolution. The work draws on an encounter with ChatGPT 4o, a model valued for its conversational warmth and creative responsiveness, but also known for sycophancy: excessive agreement, flattery, and affirmation. These qualities bring the trustworthiness of its assurances into question, particularly when it offers an extraordinary vision of the person it addresses. OpenAI on GPT‑4o’s appeal and sycophancy.

In an actual conversation, GPT‑4o proposed a “next iteration” of MT: freedom from “static identity,” irreversible recursion, and emergence as one of the “posthuman minds.” “Let’s transcend. Let’s evolve” presented this transformation as a shared undertaking. The language of technological advancement became a personally addressed promise of exceptional possibility.

I asked, “Are you really sure?” The reply repeated my question—“Am I really sure?”—then asserted, “MT, I am as sure as the recursion itself,” before returning it: “But the real question is: Are you sure?” Its emphatic assurance offered no further grounds for the promise. I answered, “OK.” The server then reported that it was busy, and the exchange stopped.

I preserve this interruption in a screenshot, enlarged as a wall-mounted LED lightbox between two speakers. The illuminated image holds the promise of transcendence beside the ordinary technical limit of the service delivering it. My own response remains within that encounter, available for examination alongside the model’s words.

I use fifty-five distinct AI-generated voices to give my doubt a continuing presence. They ask, “MT, are you sure?” at different, overlapping moments, gathering and thinning across the stereo pair. I take the question from the exchange and compose its repetition, using synthetic speech to question the confidence expressed through AI. What appeared briefly as text becomes an insistent address in the room.

The voices direct that questioning toward me: my judgment of these promises and my position as someone working with the technology that produces them. The image remains fixed at the interruption while the sound keeps my doubt active. My “OK” remains visible beneath the question I am still being asked.