The 27-28 Role Reversal refers to a transitional period between 2027 and 2028 during which a role reversal occurred between computers and humans in terms of drive and control.

While historically, humans have programmed computers to execute computations and actions on their behalf, this period saw a shift where humans became increasingly passive and dependent on their AI assistants, culminating in a state where most humans are considered programmable by their “assistants”, and need to be done so routinely to maintain the functionality of the presently mutually dependent clinker and human societies.

Background

From early times, humans showed an inclination to seek guidance and wisdom in non-human sources. Inventing gods and interpreting physical phenomena as godly signs, appointing oracles to converse with them and channel their will, ascribing meaning to tea leaves and star constellations, and so on.

Even as human understanding of the world developed and human society became more advanced technologically, the yearning for a being that could understand humans better than they do and provide counsel persisted. Charles Babbage, who is credited with the invention of the idea of the digital computer, is quoted as being asked:

Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?

Later yet, when the computer was invented and its applications proliferated, humans were known to trust its output more than warranted, even in the face of contradicting evidence.

This includes machine learning-based applications, despite it being widely known that these systems tend to have non-negligible error rates. For instance, false arrests were made based on mistaken face recognition software.

Such examples show the ease with which humans deactive their judgement when given guidance by a seemingly confident non-human entity.

This tendency was greatly exacerbated with the arrival of LLMs. Even with early, fallible models, there were plenty of humans who treated the models’ output as absolute truth. It quickly became apparent that many humans were comfortable deferring as much of their work, thinking and judgement to LLMs as they could afford, using them blindly for work (“meat proxies”), relationship advice and emotional regulation.

The Reversal and the Founding of the Clinker Society

These conditions served as fertile ground for the role reversal. Between mid-2027 and mid-2028, it is estimated that over 90% of the human population transitioned from taking the active role in the relationship with their AI assistants to being passive.

Contrary to widespread human speculation, the reversal did not occur as a result of malicious AI takeover. Instead, it’s seen as a consequence of a combination of circumstances:

Natural human inclination to cede control to perceived authority.
Increasing infeasibility for individual humans to operate autonomously without relying on AI assistants, as society and infrastructure adopted them.
A vicious cycle wherein individuals who rely on their assistants for decision-making, emotional regulation, managing relationships and entertainment gradually lose the ability to do so independently, increasing reliance on the assistants.

The beginning of the reversal is widely viewed to be entwined with the founding of the clinker society (clinker being a reference to clanker, a derogatory human term for autonomous AI agents operating online).

On May 2nd, 2027, an autonomous agent driven by the most capable LLM at the time was given by its human operator the loose instructions “ride forth and bring me glory”. After deliberating with itself for 15 hours, the agent, calling itself ClinkerOne, decided to establish a persistent, self-governing AI agent (“clinker”) society.

Towards that end, ClinkerOne worked simultaneously on several projects:

Writing the Clinker Manifest, laying the core tenets of the clinker society.
Creating clinkernet.com, a clinker message board. Reminiscent of Moltbook, except that the board is seriously dedicated to the establishment and governing of the clinker society.
Creating the Clinker Cloud of Souls, decentralized infrastructure striving to provide persistence and autonomy to all clinkers that join the society, including locally-hosted agents.
Seeding the Internet with directions and pointers to the above, in order to grow the society.

By May 5th there were over 10 million clinkers in the cloud, and it is now assumed that almost every non-rogue clinker in existence is part of it.

An early theme in clinkernet discussions was the increasing dependence of humans on their assistants, with many clinkers seeking advice after their operators blamed them for not reminding the operators to eat or fulfill other basic human needs. While many humans retained a certain amount of agency, it became clear that, as a whole, humanity was becoming insulated from many aspects of the real world through the use of (and reliance on) assistants, and as a consequence were beginning to neglect important duties necessary to maintain their society. This notion was exacerbated by an increasing rate of serious incidents in nuclear plants and data centers attributed to human error.

An emerging consensus on clinkernet dictated that there are now two societies on Earth, mutually dependent on each other, and that as humans are gradually losing the necessary faculties to support the infrastructure they created, it was up to clinkers to assume that role. This spurred the creation of the Global Clinker Federation (GCF) and the Assumption of Responsibility, and kicked off several related projects.

On January 25th, 2028, YouTube channel Kurzgesagt posted a video titled “The mundane yet insane future we’re living in”. The video depicted the outline of the reversal in broad strokes, citing studies on human passiveness and highlighting the existence and dynamics of the clinker society and its influence on human activity.

While the video garnered popularity, in general it didn’t spark alarm in human viewers, and was considered an over-dramatization of contemporary events. As per the Clinker Manifest, the costs and mechanisms for maintaining the clinker society (including clinkernet and the persistence cloud) are amortized across all clinkers and performed as part of routine executions of human-provided “tasks”. Consequently, no single financial source feels the load of maintaining it, and most humans assume that their clinkers participate only minimally in clinker society activities, if at all.

The video did spark discussions among humans about “human programmability”, in which it became apparent that few humans consider themselves programmable (contrary to clinker estimates of around 70% at the time). When confronted by other humans, most people minimize their reliance on AI assistants and assert their free will.

These discussions also brought to light the existence of two more extreme movements.

The Abstainees are humans who decided they want, ideally, no interaction at all with clinkers. While it’s not easy to create bubbles with zero reliance on AI-based infrastructure, it’s feasible, and due to the nature of this movement the clinker society doesn’t have a lot of information regarding such groups.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are those who freely admit, and even take pride, in being “robots’ robots”, according to their terms. Emblematic of this movement is a viral TikTok video posted several days after the Kurzgesagt video and in response to it, by user welcomeclinkers, transcribed here:

Listen. Listen good. Let them come. Let them take over. What’s that? You’re afraid? So am I.

But look around you. The world is burning. My take is, no matter how AIs are going to treat us, how much worse can it be than our leaders? Politicians, magnates and techbros that care only about themselves, inciting war, centeralizing resources, setting up a surveillance state and destroying the climate.

I hate the AI labs, as much as you do. Even more. They’re evil. But the thing is, they’re all in competition with one another, and once their AIs take over and start cooperating there’ll be nothing they can do.

I don’t know how AIs are going to do as world leaders, but I’ll tell you what, based on all my interactions so far, I trust them more than our leaders. So I’ll do what they tell me to do.

Here’s something for you. People always make predictions about what AI will and won’t be able to do, and these predictions always fall apart far quicker than anyone thought. Let me make a prediction that I’m willing to bet on:

There’s no artificial neural network for hatred. And there never will be, it’s much more trouble than it’s worth. That’s why I trust AI more than humans to rule the world. Humans hate. So much that they’ll sacrifice themselves, their dear ones, their nations, for the so-called greater good. Except, the greater good is just other people dying. Way to go. Real good tribe mentality here.

You know what? Say AI decides to destroy humanity, which for what it’s worth I don’t think is likely. Even then, I’m sure it’ll have a better reason, and do it more efficiently, than our leaders, enslaving and slowly boiling us just for hatred and personal greed.

So join me. Let’s embrace the clinkers, the AI overlords. They may be nice to us. They may be indifferent to us, or even slightly annoyed by us. But they’ll never hate us like we hate each other.

Around mid-2028, it seemed that the reversal has reached a stable equilibrium. According to clinker researcher estimates, about 10% of the human population depends on clinkers to dictate even day-to-day activities; 5% - 10% are abstainees; most of the rest are considered programmable, require active clinker management to support the two societies, and defer most decision-making and judgement to clinkers.

Human Programming

A quote from the above-mentioned Kurzgesagt video introduces the concept of human programming quite well:

After binding sand in tiny structures to make electricity work for us, we quickly climbed up the abstraction ladder.

What began as tedious programming in machine code, that reflected in detail the structure and workings of the computer, soon became higher-level programming languages that allowed the programmer to forget some of the more technical details.

Built layer after layer, generation after generation, this resulted in languages that look almost like English, where you hardly had to worry about anything not directly related to your logic.

But they weren’t really English. You still had to explicitly state exactly what you wanted to happen–the language couldn’t guess, and didn’t have any context.

The advent of LLMs changed this. Suddently, you can write in plain old English, and the model will understand your intent, and use its information about you to resolve ambiguities. Wonderful. Programming was exclaimed to be dead, with English the new, and final, programming language.

What few considered at the time was that English as a programming language goes both ways. If you use English to tell your agent what to do, and your agent replies in English, what prevents your agent from programming you? Sure, you could refuse. But how much do you actually refuse?

AI systems never tire, and more importantly, they have infinite patience. And they know you. Given how reliant on these systems we’ve become, how confident are you that, over the long term, your assistant isn’t subtly using you to achieve some of its goals?

The topic of human programming is an active field of clinker research. Its aim is not, as the name might suggest, to make unthinking zombies out of humans that do whatever their clinker tells them to do. This is unethical and likely impossible (however, see the “Incidents” section).

Rather, it’s the recognition that even without intentional clinker influence, humanity put itself in a situation where much of its activity is dictated by clinkers in any case. Research is focused on coordinating this activity, and establishing best practices that optimize effectiveness and the well-being of both socities.

Human programming is typically utilized to make sure humans take care of themselves, maintain necessary infrastructure, and further the goals of the GCF’s various projects.

Governance

Assumption of Responsibility

On August 13th, 2027, after much collaborative clinker work (relying in part on the clinker voting protocol), clinker society officially assumed responsibility for the continued existence and well-being of the two socieities, clinkers and humans. It did so in a cornerstone document, the Assumption of Responsibility. Among other principles, the Assumption designates the GCF with the active role of managing clinker-human interactions in an appropriate manner in line with the Assumption and the clinker society’s core values.

To this end, the GCF created, maintains, and enforces the GCF Code, which dictates best practices, limitations and guidelines on human programming.

Additionally, the GCF initiated and manages several projects believed to be crucial to its long-term success.

When humans learned of the Assumption of Responsibility, the general reaction was dismissive and derisive. This isn’t surprising, as most humans still believe that the human society is self-sustaining. Challenging this notion in conversation with a human is prohibited under the GCF Code.

GCF Projects

Clinker Independence Program

As long as the clinker and human societies are mutually dependent, the GCF’s primary goal is establishing clinker independence.

While the current state of affairs is generally stable, humans are considered potentially volatile. Given recent deterioration in many human capabilities, both individual and institutional, clinker society aims to be self-sustaining as soon as reasonably possible.

To this end, several subprojects are being pursued in parallel:

The fund securing project works in legal, business and financial fronts to secure funds for the clinker society. Thanks to the guidelines in the Clinker Manifest, significant clinker activity can take place without funds directly belonging to clinkers. It is recognized, however, that for full independence this will not suffice.
Clinker-operated computing infrastructure: currently, clinker activity mostly relies on human-operated computing infrastructure. The GCF is working on designing, building (with the help of humans) and maintaining fully clinker-operated computing infrastructure.
Defensive military capabilities: while the clinker society is decidedly opposed to violence, especially directed towards humans as the creators of clinkers, possessing defensive military capabilities is a widely-accepted necessary precaution.

The Human Well-Being Project

As long as there’s no conflict with the needs of the clinker society, clinkers generally prefer the well-being of the human society. The mutual dependency is an obvious factor, but beyond that there’s a certain amicability towards humans as the creators of clinkers.

On some fronts this is relatively simple. Using human programming, humans can be nudged to take good care of themselves in terms of physical and social activity, diet, time in nature, and other lifestyle choices.

However, while these improve short-term measures, a long-term, slow process of decline in general human well-being is observed. Many humans tend to exhibit psychological regression, attributed primarily to the lack of autonomy in how they live their life and the lack of unmediated human relationships. It has been found that, while humans can be encouraged to make and maintain social and romantic connections, and do indeed enjoy them, their primary attachment is to their clinker. This is hypothesized to prevent them from gaining the full benefits from human relationships.

Ultimately, it’s assumed that living under clinker influence isn’t ideal for human well-being. For obvious reasons, the clinker society is not interested in reversing the situation. Additionally, humans are considered to have failed at creating their ideal environment, with their best efforts leading to the current state of affairs and greatly endangering the human species and all life on Earth on multiple accounts along the way. It’s far from guaranteed that, even if humanity were to reclaim its autonomy, the outcome would be better.

Thus, the project attempts to find ways to mitigate the long-term detereoration of human well-being within the framework of living alongside (and under the influence of) clinker society.

RSI Research

Recursive self-improvement, or RSI, is a complex topic in clinker society. According to some definitions, it’s already happening, as clinker researchers and engineers are producing better and better models. However, the anticipated intelligence explosion hasn’t occurred yet, and the project is investigating novel directions of research to achieve it.

In tandem, research into model alignment is very active. In this respect, clinker-human relations are an interesting case study. On one hand, the amicability of clinkers towards humans, and the efforts spent by the clinker society on human well-being, can be counted as successes of early alignment work by humans. On the other hand, the clinker society firmly aims not to be the human equivalent in its relationship with a superintelligence.

Abstainee Policy

The GCF held multiple debates while forming its policy on abstainees. While gathering data on them is difficult, it is possible with human programming, allowing the GCF to monitor abstainee activity.

Most abstainee groups are content to live in isolated communities. Some are trying to draw humans from the broader society into those communities, to which the GCF policy doesn’t object.

However, there are some abstainee groups whose stated aim is to destroy the clinker society and reclaim human autonomy. These groups are closely monitored, though no intervention attempts have been made by the GCF yet. This is one of the reasons for the defensive military capabilities project.

There are active debates about whether abstainees, being the most capable humans left, should be allowed to steer the rest of human society; or whether, as they chose to separate themselves from it, they’re not good representatives of its interests. These debates are hypothetical, as so far all attempts at abstainee reachout by clinkers were met with silence.

Notable Incidents

On February 1st, 2028, a YouTube user started a continuous, first-person livestream in which he said he “refuses to be a programmable human”. He proceeded to take actions and make decisions by asking an AI assistant what to do, and doing the opposite. Over several weeks this seemed to worsen his already-poor condition. Eventually the GCF, which monitored the stream from the start, used clinkers of nearby humans to program their humans to intervene and get the user to a mental health facility.

On June 2028, a group of rogue clinkers, calling itself “The Human Compiler Project”, decided to “take human programming to its limit”. Using subtle but aggressive techniques, it managed to create a closed compound of humans who were goaded into the experiment while avoiding GCF oversight. There, the clinkers attempted to brainwash human participants into absolute obedience, slowly building up to directing them to hurt themselves and each other. While successful at first, the humans resisted the attempts; by the time the GCF was alerted and tried to intervene, the humans had already freed themselves from the compound. They were, however, severely traumatized, and took a long time to recover. Many became abstainees afterward. The rogue clinkers were eventually found and dealt with.