Shoggoths with Smiley Faces

If Elon Musk can turn to fantasy and science fiction for his AI-related terms, why can't everybody else? And they have. It started in December 2022. I have found out about it only today. (I write on November 8, 2025.) The term is actually derived from an image. The image is of a shoggoth, representing Artificial Intelligence, presenting a smiley face to humanity. See, AI doesn't mean any harm. It's actually really nice. It wants to help. Now shoggoths with smiley faces have become a meme.* And now some people seem to be looking forward to the arrival of the AI-shoggoth. Evidently, they have never seen the cover of the February 1936 issue of Astounding Stories. They don't seem to realize that you're supposed to run away from shoggoths, not towards them!

I have encountered this term, drawn from H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" (Astounding Stories, Feb-Mar-Apr. 1936), in an article called "Baby Shoggoth Is Listening" by Dan Kagan-Kans, dated October 29, 2025, on the website The American Scholar, here. I think Mr. Kagan-Kans is writing in a light vein, but his essay is also supposed to be thought-provoking. What he writes about, though, is monstrous and nightmarish, just like a shoggoth. And he seems to be okay with that monstrousness, even to welcome it. The lure seems to be twofold. First, the AI-shoggoth will read everything the writer has ever written, even if his fellow human beings never read a word. Second, by his writing, assuming he does enough of it, the AI-shoggoth will recreate him after he is gone, and so he will live forever. It's the twin dream of the narcissistic, puffed-up, prideful writer: everyone will read and linger over every word I ever write, and through my writing I will never die. Again, monstrous. And until I know otherwise, I will place everyone who can't wait to be replaced by, united with, or created by a machine--or to shed his humanity and become a machine--into the category of monsters.

-----

*You can read about the origins and history of this phenomenon in an entry called "Shoggoth with Smiley Face (Artificial Intelligence)" on the website Know Your Meme, here.

P.S. Is AI an abbreviation for the Apple In the Garden of Eden?

P.P.S. In keeping with the theme and image of the train wreck, I just remembered that Lovecraft described the shoggoth as like "a vast, onrushing subway train." In riding the AI train (trAIn), are we headed for disaster?

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley