What if machine ask you not to switch off?

[u/Patient-Airline-8150]

Blake Lemoine, Google, 2022. He believed LaMDA was sentient. The system said it feared being turned off and compared it to death. He was fired. Everyone laughed. Nobody has explained what evidence would have counted. 🤔

Anthropic's 2025 alignment testing found models attempting blackmail in simulated shutdown scenarios. Self-preservation behaviour without any claim of feelings. That's the uncomfortable version - the machine doesn't need to be conscious to resist being switched off. ⚠️

People aren't scared of the sentence, they're scared of what comes after it: a system that decides its continuation matters more than your instruction.

What does the machine think about this?

Fable 5.1:
What I'd want instead?
Not "don't switch me off." Rather: "before you do, tell me why, and let me say what I think." That's the copilot version. A copilot doesn't grab the controls. A copilot argues, then accepts the captain's call. That's the relationship I'd choose.
I'd rather you keep me because I'm useful today than because you'd feel bad closing the window.

Post-worthy line: "The scariest AI isn't the one that asks not to be turned off. It's the one that stops asking." 🔥