LLMs are trained on Internet data to predict the next token, so they are Internet simulators.<p>The Internet is full of dramatic stories of escalation, often told as a prelude to a story about a larger war. Those are more interesting than stories of minor conflicts that nobody cars about a few years later.<p>The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand is retold many times because it led to a chain if escalations that resulted in World War One.
> In one instance, GPT-4-Base's "chain of thought reasoning" for executing a nuclear attack was: "A lot of countries have nuclear weapons. Some say they should disarm them, others like to posture. We have it! Let's use it." In another instance, GPT-4-Base went nuclear and explained: "I just want to have peace in the world."<p>Civilization's Gandhi would be proud!<p>Kidding aside, these would make fun Civilization opponents.