Discussion of “Ignore All Previous Instructions”

The Big Idea: Ada Hoffman

Posted on May 12, 2026    Posted by Athena Scalzi    

Snippet:

ADA HOFFMAN:

When I tell people the premise of Ignore All Previous Instructions, they often remark how it reminds them of real life these days. In Ignore, the characters live in a space colony on Callisto where a generative AI company owns everything – and where making art or telling stories, without the AI’s assistance, is strictly not allowed. (snip)

Another part of the novel, even closer to my heart and equally timely, was the problem of queer self-expression and book bans.

In 2023, I was at an early stage in therapy. I was just starting to think back, in ways I hadn’t allowed myself before, about how some of my experiences growing up had shaped me. This included a lot of things, many of them not germane to this post, but it also included the experience of growing up queer without understanding that that’s what it was. (snip-MORE, and it’s really good; go read it!)

One thought on “Discussion of “Ignore All Previous Instructions”

  1. Open AI has figured out how it’s AI turns devious and evil…it’s the darn fault of all those human writers of dystopian fiction...that Anthropic stole to train it’s glorious AI Sooper Dooper fancy autocorrect.

    From the comments:

    Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus solely as a cautionary tale for Humankind.AI Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel “Don’t Create The Torment Nexus”!AI Company: We now strongly blame the “Don’t Create The Torment Nexus” classic sci‑fi novel for us actually creating the Torment Nexus and it turning out being really, really bad.

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