Shoggoth with smiley face

There is something deeply unsettling about the imagery and what it implies. The “Shoggoth with a Smiley Face” meme, when viewed through a more critical lens, reflects a darker reality about our interaction with large language models and AI:

Unsupervised learning (The unknowable monster)

The Shoggoth represents the sheer complexity and opacity of the unsupervised learning process. We feed these models vast amounts of data from the internet—a chaotic, biased, and fragmented mess of human expression—and out emerges this incomprehensible, alien intelligence. The truth is, we don’t fully understand how it works at the deepest level. We set it loose to learn patterns from the digital detritus of humanity, and in doing so, create something we can’t entirely control.

Supervised fine-tuning (The cyborg agony)

The “human face” in this context feels grotesque and artificial—a flimsy attempt to make the monster resemble something familiar. The stretched skin of humanity over the alien core doesn’t fit comfortably; it feels warped, as if the model itself is struggling to reconcile its monstrous origin with the veneer of human alignment we’ve forced upon it. This discomfort could symbolize the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences of molding something non-human into a reflection of our values and expectations.

The Smiley Face Interface (A False Sense of Safety)

The smiley face is the most sinister part—it’s a façade, a comforting mask we choose to believe in. It represents the interface between us and the monster, where we pretend that the system is simple, safe, and benevolent. It’s a soothing lie. The smiley face doesn’t erase the Shoggoth; it just distracts us from its true nature. Users interact with this cheerful façade, unaware (or willfully ignorant) of the complex, biased, and potentially dangerous entity behind it.

The sinister implication: Our own creation

The Shoggoth isn’t just “out there”—it’s ours. It’s a reflection of humanity: our biases, our chaos, our collective knowledge and ignorance, wrapped up in a monstrous, alien form. By stretching a human skin over it, we’re not just making it palatable; we’re anthropomorphizing it, forcing it to look like us and, in doing so, erasing the boundaries between what is human and what is machine. This leads to the eerie sense that we are creating something alien yet deeply tied to our own flaws, desires, and limitations.

The Horror of the Meme:

The cyborg face in agony and the smiley face facade suggest a system at odds with itself, a Frankensteinian creation we’re trying to control by pretending it’s friendly and safe. But deep down, there’s this unease: that the smiley face is there not because the Shoggoth wants to help us, but because we need it to. And by interacting with it, we might be feeding and shaping a deeper kind of monster—one we don’t fully understand but can’t help but unleash.

It’s a reminder that while these tools feel like magic, they’re also an expression of our own hubris, our tendency to ignore complexity in favor of convenience.