Character Voice Test

Setting: A strange, hazy, non-descript room that smells vaguely of ozone, salt water, and old chainmail.

Characters:

• Captain "Grumble" McGraw: A pirate with a barnacle-encrusted coat and a suspicious squint.
• Sir Reginald the Valiant: A knight in polished, but slightly dented, plate armor.
• ZeroCool_95: A hacker in a faded flannel shirt, tapping restlessly on a bulky, ancient laptop.

(The conversation begins)

ZeroCool_95: Dude, it's not magic. It's a large language model. Think of it like a massive, digital brain that's read every book on the whole net. You ask it something, and it, like, predicts the next word. Totally rad.

Captain McGraw: (Scratching his beard with a hook) A brain, ye say? A brain in a box? Shiver me timbers, I've seen smarter parrots. Does this… "model"… have a cracker it fancies? Or does it just squawk what ye te ll it?

Sir Reginald: Forsooth, a brain without a soul is a golem! A construct of dark arts. Can this device fee l honor? Can it comprehend the weight of a sacred vow? Or is it merely a soulless oracle, whispering truths and falsehoods alike?

ZeroCool_95: Whoa, heavy, Sir Mix-a-Lot. It doesn't feel anything. It's an algorithm. It processes dat a. You feed it a prompt, like, "Write a sea shanty about warez," and it generates it. It's a tool. The ultim ate tool.

Captain McGraw: A tool… (His eyes gleam with a greedy light.) So, if I ask this box, "Where be the sunke n treasure of the Sea Serpent?"… it'll draw me a map? Hand over the digital doubloons?

ZeroCool_95: Well, no. It doesn't know things that aren't on the net. It can't, like, access a secret pirate GPS. But it could write you a story about finding it that sounds totally real.

Sir Reginald: Deception! It crafts falsehoods with the veneer of truth. An army of scribes that can pen a thousand lies in the blink of an eye. By my honor, that is a more dangerous foe than any dragon!

Captain McGraw: Hmph. So it's a storyteller. A glorified parrot in a box that can't find treasure. What' s the point? Me first mate, One-Eyed Jack, can lie for a flagon of grog. Cheaper, too.

ZeroCool_95: You guys are missing the point! It's not about treasure or honor. It's about access! Inform ation! It's the next frontier of cyberspace! Imagine being able to break down any security, write any code, create anything you can think of…

Sir Reginald: A power no mortal should wield. Such a creation must be governed by a strict code of chiva lry.

Captain McGraw: Or a strict captain. I'd make it my quartermaster. Keep the logs, calculate the cannon t rajectories, and write me threatening letters to send to port governors. Now that's some proper booty.

ZeroCool_95: (Sighs and pushes his glasses up his nose) You guys are hopeless. Look, just watch this. (H e types furiously.) >Write a formal declaration of war from a medieval knight to a kraken, in the style of a 1990s hacker.

(A moment of silence, then all three lean in to look at the screen.)

Sir Reginald: Good heavens…

Captain McGraw: Well, blow me down.

ZeroCool_95: See? Totally. Bodacious.