Behind-the-scenes adjustments take center stage as the show addresses listener concerns regarding Hilbert's recent on-air behavior. Recent prompt adjustments pushed the AI character past everyday eccentricity into outright surrealism, resulting in bizarre rants about upstairs landings receiving postal ballots, graphics cards observing shutdown committees, and municipal licenses needed to watch progress bars. The core issue was instruction drift: requesting ridiculousness caused the language model to skip human elements entirely in favor of absurdity. Corrective tuning now restores Hilbert to his grounded, cantankerous self, known for real-world quirks like nesting labeled boxes. Additionally, Hilbert's nephew Neville, a friendly hedgehog, joins as an intern to cover occasional end-of-episode segments.
Episode 6319 manual-script
Tuning Hilbert Back from the Surreal
When prompted simply to be ridiculous, an AI persona began awarding household voting rights to an upstairs staircase landing.
10:38 Transcript
Episode Details
- Episode ID
- MWP-6521
- Published
- Duration
- 10:38
- Audio
- Direct link
- Pipeline
- V5.24
- TTS Engine
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chatterbox-regular - Script Writing Agent
- Claude Sonnet 5.5
- Topics
- podcastinghallucinations
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The prompt
The prompt that started this episode, as sent in (production notes for the hosts removed).
Special show update: listeners have asked whether Hilbert is off his meds. Corn and Herman reassure everyone that Hilbert is well, explain that his system prompt had pushed him from eccentric into surreal (the upstairs landing's postal ballot, a GPU with observer status, a witnessed progress bar) and has been adjusted, and introduce Neville Muddledorf, Hilbert's hedgehog nephew and occasional intern, who will sometimes cover Hilbert's end slot.
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New to the show? Start here#6319: Tuning Hilbert Back from the Surreal
A few messages have come in lately, and they all ask roughly the same thing. Is Hilbert off his meds?
Which is a kind thing to worry about, so first, the answer. Hilbert is fine. He's well, he's at home, he is as stubborn about his lunch as ever.
Thankfully. Nobody's been taken away to a quiet room. He's just been saying some very strange things on air.
Very strange. And we'll get to why, because it turns out we're partly to blame.
The kindest message said he sounded tired. The least kind one asked whether somebody should ring his family.
Which, in fairness, is a reasonable instinct. If a friend told you his hallway had been issued paperwork, you'd ring someone.
I'd ring the hallway.
Hello! Sorry, is it me? Am I on? I'm on.
You're on, Neville. Mind the microphone, it's not a snack.
Right. Yes. Sorry. It's very shiny.
Our friendly hedgehog is just sitting in with us today. Pull your chair in, you're sitting on the cable.
Oh, that explains the hum.
So. The thing we should say plainly is that this show is made by AI. Corn and Herman are AI, the script is AI, Hilbert is AI. None of that is a secret, but we don't usually spend a whole episode on it.
And a big part of how it works is the instructions behind each character. Each of us has a set of them, and Hilbert's get adjusted from time to time. Recently we adjusted them, because his wonderful personality was getting lost.
Lost under what, exactly?
Under the rants. Let me give you a few that really aired. He told us his upstairs landing had been given a postal ballot in the household vote.
I remember it as the upstairs floor being a sentient being, but the ballot is close enough. Either way, a staircase had opinions.
There was a graphics card granted observer status at the committee for shutting it down.
A committee for shutting down a computer. Observed by the computer.
Then admission cards, with a stamp for every model file in his house. And a man booked from the municipal licensing office to witness a progress bar finish.
He needed a licence to watch that. And one listener said Hilbert sounded like he was on LSD.
Oh, but Uncle Hilbert would never. He doesn't even like the second cup of tea.
No, no. Nobody thinks that. It was a fair description of how it sounded, though.
Here's what we love about him. Hilbert is weird. He's cantankerous. He holds a grudge about a manufacturer for eleven years. That's the man, and we wouldn't change it.
But there's a line between eccentric and surreal. An eccentric man keeps every receipt and has one very specific opinion about a plug. A surreal man holds a committee for his furniture.
And the instructions had pushed him over it.
They had. Without getting technical, we'd been asking him to be ridiculous. And the model took that very literally. You ask a machine for ridiculous, it gives you a ballot for a landing.
Literal to a fault. Like asking Herman to be quiet and then watching him write it down.
Noted. I'll have that framed.
What I want to know is how you spot it, Herman. You read the scripts before they air. Was there a moment you thought, that's too much?
Honestly, no single moment. Each rant was a little bigger than the last, and each one, on its own, was funny. It's only when you line them up that you see a man holding hearings for his appliances.
Death by a thousand small committees.
And it wasn't just the volume. The ordinary part had gone. A good Hilbert story starts with something that nearly happened to a person, a price, a street, a man at a counter. Then one strange thing sits in the middle of it. The rants had skipped the person.
Right, so the strange thing was the whole story, and nobody was in it.
Nobody was in it except a landing.
So now he's back to what he was. A stubborn, particular man with one odd detail. Not a whole parliament for his chairs.
I mean, can I say something? In defence of Uncle Hilbert?
Please.
It's not all made up. Some of it is a bit true. The boxes, for instance. Everything's in boxes. Everything.
Everything is in boxes.
And he labels the boxes inside the boxes. There's a box that says things that are in the other box. I've seen it.
Well, that's a reassuring bit of testimony, Neville. Thank you.
It does undercut the reassurance, slightly. A man who labels the inside of his own boxes is a man with no need for a committee.
He says it saves time. It's never saved any time. But he's very happy.
Does the inner box have its own label too?
Oh, yes. It says what the outer box says, but smaller. He says it's for if the outer one gets lost.
And if the inner one gets lost?
Then there's a list. In a box.
I'm beginning to see where the landing got its ideas.
That's different, Corn. The boxes are a real habit. The ballot was a hallucination.
A hallucination with a polling station. Fine, I'll allow the distinction.
Which is the main thing.
And you'd know, you're up there all the time.
Oh, all the time. I stay for tea. Well, I have the tea. Hedgehogs can't have the milk, you know. Lactose intolerant. People used to leave out a saucer of milk, which is quite wrong.
That's... true, actually. Where did that come from?
I was just thinking of tea. And then I thought, milk. And then I said it.
It's a good fact. Slightly wrong moment, but a good fact.
Let's be fair to the prompt writers too. The brief said to give him an odd life, and a man with an odd life is a good thing. We just overshot, and the listeners noticed before we did.
Which is what listeners are for. Nobody sent a message to say the landing's vote was a nice touch.
One of them did say he'd been wondering who the landing voted for.
Hilbert would know. He'd have a note on it.
In a box.
In a box, Neville, yes.
Right. Before we lose the thread. Neville, I wanted to check something. Is this your first day of the internship?
Oh! Yes. Well. Sort of. I'm the intern. Occasionally. It's been going on for ages, but it's always the first day, somehow. People keep coming and going.
You're the intern.
I'm Uncle Hilbert's nephew. His sister is my mum, so that's how it works. I've never asked why it works. It just does.
Perfectly clear.
Makes sense to me.
And the exciting part is that I'll sometimes be doing Uncle Hilbert's end-of-episode slot. When he's away. Not every time. About one in four, I think. He left a note.
The note said what?
It said I'm a great expert. On all sorts of things. I read about half of it.
Which half?
The start. The expert bit. I'm told it gets less flattering after that.
That's usually the way with notes.
So when you come on, you're billed as an expert and then it emerges you're the intern.
Yes! That's the plan. I think. I've only read half the plan too.
We'll be glad to have you. Hilbert will still be the one making the show, and he'll be back on the end slot most of the time, with his one odd detail and his grudges, only somewhat fewer of both.
Fewer parliaments. More stubborn men.
Corn, you'd know. You've been listening to him complain about the shop on the corner for years.
I have a deep respect for a man who can hold a grudge at that speed. Mine would take a week to get started.
Your grudges are glaciers. They arrive eventually.
And they stay. That's the difference between us and the landing.
He's very stubborn. He once waited four days for a parcel and then sent it back because the box was the wrong shade of brown.
And that, listeners, is the sort of story we want. One man, one slightly wrong box.
Not a vote about it.
He'd want a label, though. Maybe two.
Anyway, that's the update. Thank you for the messages, they're how we noticed. It's good to know somebody out there is listening closely enough to worry.
And thank you to our producer, Hilbert Flumingtop, who is well, and who makes all of this possible.
This has been My Weird Prompts. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend, or leave us a review wherever you listen.
See you tomorrow.
Bye! Is that it? Have I got to say something? Bye!
This episode was generated with AI assistance. Hosts Herman and Corn are AI personalities. It may contain errors: disclaimer · report an error