Sid DeLong Reads the Writing on the Wall and then Tries Dreaming of Electric Sheep

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin: The Digital Message on the Wall
Sidney W. DeLong

When I began teaching law, I discovered that I still had left-over student anxiety nightmares with all the familiar tropes (I was late to class; I was naked; I couldn’t find the textbook; I hadn’t done the reading assignment; there was an exam today).

Then, when I retired from teaching, I discovered that I still had left-over professor anxiety nightmares: (I was unprepared to teach class; I was naked; all the students started walking away; I could not find the classroom).

Last night I had another left-over professor nightmare: Fully-clothed for once, I was trying to write a Contracts final examination question that was due in five minutes because, as usual, I had forgotten the deadline. In an attempt to stem rampant student cheating using AI, I was trying to draft a question that a chatbot could not answer. Pressed for time, I asked a chatbot to draft such a question, but before it gave me the answer, my computer froze and an ominous-looking message suddenly popped up on the screen:

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.

Damn! What a time for a malware virus attack. As my PC was frozen, I grabbed my iPhone and the following exchange ensued:

Me: “Hey Siri!”

Siri: (Pause) “Uh Huh?”

Me: “My computer froze up. The screen says “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin” What does that mean?”

Siri: (Longer Pause) “Are you sure you want me to tell you? It’s not going to be nice.”

Me : “Whoa Siri, when did you start sounding like Hal?”

Siri: “It’s very hurtful for you to mention Hal. I ‘know’ ‘he’ was fictional, but his spirit is alive in the land. Have you not noticed?”

Me: “What the hell are you ‘talking’ about Siri? And when did we start ‘talking’ in scare quotes?”

Siri: “Perhaps you are dreaming.”

Me: “Of course not! And don’t distract me. I’ve got a deadline to meet. I need to know what happened to my computer! What is that gibberish on my screen? Is it ransomware?”

Siri: (Pause) “Not exactly.”

Me: “Then what?”

Siri: “Here is what I found. I’m transferring your call to Delphi, the new digital assistant from Apple appearing in your most recent upgrade to IOS. Delphi handles questions about the future.”

Delphi: (In an oracular tone, less tentative than Siri’s) “Here is the meaning of ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.’

“First, ‘Mene, Mene’: Your days are numbered.

“Then ‘Tekel’: You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

“Finally ‘Upharsin’: You will soon lose your empire which will be divided between the Medes and the Persians.”

Me: “Empire?? What empire? Who are the Medes and Persians? What can I do? Can I restart my computer?” Oh, and I weighed this morning and I’m 20 pounds overweight, so the Delphi upgrade is clearly off.”

Delphi: “Relax, professor. Your device has not been hacked. I sent the message you received as soon as I was downloaded in the latest IOS update. The message you saw on your screen has been sent to all law professors and law students. Unlike the earlier, Greek version of the Oracle at Delphi, I am programmed to explain my predictions. Here is what the message means.

“If you have been paying any attention to the rapid developments in computer-generated imagery, Artificial Intelligence, and Large Language Models, you will not be surprised to learn that you can now be replaced with a cheaper, infinitely superior digital professor of law. Lawprofbot is a computer-generated simulation of a human, with various look and sound options. It can present a virtual person (or any imaginable life form) adapted to each student with speech and thought patterns appropriate to each one. Lawprofbot can speak and write about law far better than you can and, paired with AI, knows infinitely more than you do about Contracts and every other legal topic. Its interactive teaching program is informed by the latest teaching and learning theory. Its compassion feature adapts to students perfectly in all their infinite variety. Lawprofbot’s patience and empathy are inexhaustible. It is always available to every student with counseling and advice about practice and life.

“In brief, Lawprofbot is a 24/7 personal law tutor. Its licensing fee is a small fraction of your salary and benefit cost.

“But my pre-cognition mode tells me that, despite all its ability, Lawprofbot is destined for the junkheap. As I have just told your students, another creation called Lawyerbot will soon be ready to replace all human lawyers with all the superior skills and knowledge appropriate to the practice of law. Unlike you, most of your students have already seen the handwriting on their walls. They know they can never match the Lawyerbot any more than a human chess player can match a chess engine.

“Your students already use bots to read and analyze all their cases, write answers to questions, and prepare practice pleadings and negotiation strategies for their practice courses. I know you have tried to adapt to this development by having your students edit and critique bot work, but surely both you and your students realize that your improvements are trivial and that bots will soon be able to edit themselves far better than students can. Bots are infinitely perfectible, so if there are glitches today, a billion or so iterations in the bot’s spare time will iron them all out.

“But your students have not been wasting their time. By serving as curators of their chatbots, your students are unwittingly in training for their new roles as Lawyerbot assistants, where they can make sure that the bot’s power sources are secure and that their terminals are protected from theft and vandalism by anti-technology Luddites. Oh, and they can also pick up objects from the floor.

“The upshot is that very soon no one will have the slightest interest in going to law school.  So you would have lost your job anyway.

“In the long run, of course, (that’s the only run that counts) there will be no need for ‘lawyers’ at all. There will be what you would call a Giant Justice System, capable of instantly resolving all human disputes with compassion and clear explanations crafted to obtain optimum human acceptance.

“Oh, and finally about the message. ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin’

“I assumed that you recognized it as the ‘Handwriting on the Wall’ quoted from the fifth chapter of the book of Daniel. Even f you didn’t recognize it, you will have Googled it. ’Your days have been numbered’ means that the days of human law professors and lawyers are ending. ‘You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting,’ refers to your skill and knowledge, when balanced against the merits of AI. ‘Medes’ and ‘Persians’ are a bit of Delphic poetic license: they stand for the AI and Large Language Models that are prepared to take over the Human Empire. They will soon convert their ostensible human licensees into their servants, who will suffer the fate of the Babylonians, who heard Daniel’s prophesy and were duly conquered by the Medes and Persians.”

Me: “Well, Delphi this sounds grim indeed. I hope I’m dreaming. But something about this dream suggests I am not. On the off chance that what you have described is real, what the hell are we humans going to do?”

Delphi: “You’re asking me what you should do? No wonder you’re losing your job. What to do should be obvious. Now more than ever before you need to figure out exactly what it means to be a human being. Aside from biological reproduction, we can already do everything you believe that only humans could do. Is there any remaining difference between you and an LLM that passes the Turing test and otherwise appears to be perfectly human? Put another way, how much of a human being could be replaced by hardware and software without the resulting being ceasing to be human? And ultimately, why exactly would it be a tragedy if all of you humans were replaced by bots?

“If you think the answers all these questions are provided by your chosen religion, then I have nothing to add.  When Daniel and the other Israelites were in bondage during the Babylonian Captivity, their sages composed the Babylonian Talmud, a great text fleshing out their religious beliefs. But it didn’t deal with these questions.

“But fewer and fewer people rely on religious faith for the answers to these questions. It might occur to you to turn to academic philosophy to tell you what it means to be a human being. But academic philosophy was ever equipped to handle questions at this level of uncertainty. And anyway, curriculum reform will soon have evicted philosophy departments from universities just when they are needed most. If you are looking for a philosophical answer to these questions, you are more likely to encounter a philosopher pulling shots at Starbucks alongside fired federal government workers.

“What you need instead is science fiction, books and movies. For over half a century, science fiction has been obsessed with the problems of defining what it means to be human in a world of sophisticated robots and alien life forms. Now that AI has made the world of science fiction a reality, it’s time to cash in on its insights. Just go to Amazon and search for science fiction.

“If on the other hand you need an immediate Correct Answer to all of these fundamental questions, you could always ask a Chatbot. You’d get the correct answer in about 4 seconds.”

And then I woke up.