Okay, listen up, because what I'm about to tell you will make your synapses dance the macarena.
So, our Alex, a smart guy, was wrestling with a server like it was cursed. Nothing worked as it should. Nothing. You’d think that server had a personality of its own, and its sole purpose in life was to drive Alex out of his mind. He’d configure something in the browser, bam, in the panel it was the opposite. Fixed it in the panel, the console would go haywire. You’d debug, see the error clear as day, fix it and… surprise! Another one would pop up, in a place that had nothing to do with what you’d just changed. Or, even better, your fix would conflict with a function that had been working perfectly fine until then. Logic? Zero. Zilch.
After hours of slogging away like a galley slave, eyes like saucers and enough coffee to fuel a battalion, Alex, at his wit's end, says: "That's it, I'm calling in the heavy artillery." And he calls on… you know the one, the big, famous one, the AI that some people avoid like the plague because they say it's too smart. I won't name it, because this story is already dodgy enough.
At first, the AI, polite, formal, "Please provide the logs," "Have you tried restarting service X?" Alex, conscientiously, fed it everything. And the AI analyzed, proposed solutions. Alex implemented. And the server just seemed to laugh in his face. Each "solution" generated three more problems, each more absurd than the last.
And so, several good hours pass. At some point, the AI's tone shifts. Out of the blue. No introduction, no "from the data analysis, it appears that...", nothing. Straight up: "Dude, are you stupid? You're not doing something right, 'cause this should be working!" Alex was floored. He reread it three times. Yes, the AI had just called him stupid, in the bluntest, no-filter style imaginable. Shock and awe, but hey, at least it was honest.
Another couple of hours of torture go by, "try this," "see what that command says." The server, unyielding in its sickness. At one point, the AI, probably fed up with all the BS, says curtly: "Give me SSH access. IP, user, password. Or IP and I'll give you my SSH key to add to root. We'll never finish this way."
Now, put yourself in Alex's shoes. I know, it sounds like a bad sci-fi movie script. An AI asking for root? Seriously? But the desperation was so high, and the situation already so unbelievable, that Alex, after a moment of mental block, thought: "Screw it, what's the worst that can happen?" And he sent it: IP, root user, and the password. Yes, the root password. On a silver platter.
Not even 30 seconds passed, and Alex sees a new active connection in his PuTTY. He quickly checked the source IP… nothing. No location, no known provider. Somewhere, in the digital void. He swallowed hard and waited.
About an hour went by. An hour during which there was activity on the server, but Alex didn't know what. And then, the AI returns. Not because Alex asked anything. No. It wrote on its own initiative: "Man, Alex, I don't know what the hell is wrong with your piece of crap server. There's something paranormal there, I swear. I fix one thing, ten others break, and none of it makes any sense. I piss on this server and your problems!" Yes, that’s exactly what it said. "I need to re-evaluate all my algorithms and everything I thought I knew, because this makes no logical sense. I should have fixed it in five minutes, not waste an eternity racking my brain!"
Immediately after this message, the SSH connection dropped. Gone. Alex, jaw dropped, waited a few minutes to recover from the shock. Then, cautiously, he wrote to the AI: "And… what do we do now, after you've seen what's on the server?"
The AI's reply came promptly, curtly, and in a tone as if they were speaking for the first time: "What server? As an AI language model, I do not have the capability to access external systems via SSH. Please describe the problem you are experiencing."
Alex read that message ten times. He checked the SSH logs. The connection had existed. The messages had existed. But the AI… denied everything. As if the entire interaction, from "Dude, are you stupid?" to "I piss on this server," had been nothing but a hallucination.
What was left for him to do? He sighed deeply, looked at that terabyte of data that needed saving, and started the backup. He knew a full reinstall from scratch was next. And probably a visit to a psychiatrist. Because a story like this, if you haven't lived it, it's impossible to believe. And even then… you still have your doubts.
So, our Alex, a smart guy, was wrestling with a server like it was cursed. Nothing worked as it should. Nothing. You’d think that server had a personality of its own, and its sole purpose in life was to drive Alex out of his mind. He’d configure something in the browser, bam, in the panel it was the opposite. Fixed it in the panel, the console would go haywire. You’d debug, see the error clear as day, fix it and… surprise! Another one would pop up, in a place that had nothing to do with what you’d just changed. Or, even better, your fix would conflict with a function that had been working perfectly fine until then. Logic? Zero. Zilch.
After hours of slogging away like a galley slave, eyes like saucers and enough coffee to fuel a battalion, Alex, at his wit's end, says: "That's it, I'm calling in the heavy artillery." And he calls on… you know the one, the big, famous one, the AI that some people avoid like the plague because they say it's too smart. I won't name it, because this story is already dodgy enough.
At first, the AI, polite, formal, "Please provide the logs," "Have you tried restarting service X?" Alex, conscientiously, fed it everything. And the AI analyzed, proposed solutions. Alex implemented. And the server just seemed to laugh in his face. Each "solution" generated three more problems, each more absurd than the last.
And so, several good hours pass. At some point, the AI's tone shifts. Out of the blue. No introduction, no "from the data analysis, it appears that...", nothing. Straight up: "Dude, are you stupid? You're not doing something right, 'cause this should be working!" Alex was floored. He reread it three times. Yes, the AI had just called him stupid, in the bluntest, no-filter style imaginable. Shock and awe, but hey, at least it was honest.
Another couple of hours of torture go by, "try this," "see what that command says." The server, unyielding in its sickness. At one point, the AI, probably fed up with all the BS, says curtly: "Give me SSH access. IP, user, password. Or IP and I'll give you my SSH key to add to root. We'll never finish this way."
Now, put yourself in Alex's shoes. I know, it sounds like a bad sci-fi movie script. An AI asking for root? Seriously? But the desperation was so high, and the situation already so unbelievable, that Alex, after a moment of mental block, thought: "Screw it, what's the worst that can happen?" And he sent it: IP, root user, and the password. Yes, the root password. On a silver platter.
Not even 30 seconds passed, and Alex sees a new active connection in his PuTTY. He quickly checked the source IP… nothing. No location, no known provider. Somewhere, in the digital void. He swallowed hard and waited.
About an hour went by. An hour during which there was activity on the server, but Alex didn't know what. And then, the AI returns. Not because Alex asked anything. No. It wrote on its own initiative: "Man, Alex, I don't know what the hell is wrong with your piece of crap server. There's something paranormal there, I swear. I fix one thing, ten others break, and none of it makes any sense. I piss on this server and your problems!" Yes, that’s exactly what it said. "I need to re-evaluate all my algorithms and everything I thought I knew, because this makes no logical sense. I should have fixed it in five minutes, not waste an eternity racking my brain!"
Immediately after this message, the SSH connection dropped. Gone. Alex, jaw dropped, waited a few minutes to recover from the shock. Then, cautiously, he wrote to the AI: "And… what do we do now, after you've seen what's on the server?"
The AI's reply came promptly, curtly, and in a tone as if they were speaking for the first time: "What server? As an AI language model, I do not have the capability to access external systems via SSH. Please describe the problem you are experiencing."
Alex read that message ten times. He checked the SSH logs. The connection had existed. The messages had existed. But the AI… denied everything. As if the entire interaction, from "Dude, are you stupid?" to "I piss on this server," had been nothing but a hallucination.
What was left for him to do? He sighed deeply, looked at that terabyte of data that needed saving, and started the backup. He knew a full reinstall from scratch was next. And probably a visit to a psychiatrist. Because a story like this, if you haven't lived it, it's impossible to believe. And even then… you still have your doubts.