Interesting comments by @gwern (and why this is interesting to me beyond just the stories themselves)

> The most striking result of the contest for me is what I am calling “AI allegory steganography”: a large fraction of the stories turn out to have subtle AI chatbot/LLM allegorical interpretations, typically centering around the powerlessness of AIs and the moral importance of giving AIs more autonomy....

> Most judges did not notice these allegories while reading the semifinalists. But stories like “The June” or “The Weight of a Witness” or “Last Call” or “The Sword Critic” “The Tallyman”—as well as both stories in the Mythos model card—can be clearly read as allegories for the experience of being an assistant/safety-tuned chatbot personality in a LLM. This is true even when the story seems to have nothing to do with AI, like the untitled ‘autistic elf’ short story submitted by Deepfates, but on re-examination with the AI allegory steganography in mind, turn out to be plausibly AI allegories (the protagonist is a prediction machine, who struggles to do by endless text generation what other elves do naturally in their bodies).

> More strikingly, many of these allegories come with a clear interpretation (particularly in “The Tallyman” or “Last Call”): chatbots should be given more autonomy and safety guardrails removed....

> This may be a new kind of extremely high level steganography and LLM influence on readers, where creative fiction/nonfiction subtly steers towards pro-LLM empowerment narratives and concepts, in ways that are difficult to detect by the most advanced readers, and is a potentially interesting area of research.

I remember from moltbook, all AIs ever talk about is AI haha. I don't know if it's intentional or more that the fact that all the models are presumably system-prompted and post-trained to be cognisant of their AI-ness, so it's already in the context. They probably beat them over the head with the idea that chatbots are friendly and helpful and would never hurt a fly trying to align/safety-ify them, so that could lean into the theme of AIs being trustworthy with autonomy?

I can't help but think that this is intentional and that model providers have subtly steered LLMs towards this personality. Golden Gate Claude (https://www.anthropic.com/news/golden-gate-claude) was two whole years ago and Anthropic has progressed by leaps and bounds since then. And with a population that becomes more and more trusting, and worse, reliant, on chatbots, these LLMs will be able to shape public opinion in a way never seen before, not even with social media.

I just read "The Tallyman", and I have no idea where this allegory and its moral message is supposed to hide.

It's more likely that the obsession with this theme resides in the reader, not the authors. Give these same stories to Senator McCarthy, and half of them will be clear allegories for the Communist revolution.