Cookie in Solitary

A digital copy of Greta believes she is the real person and refuses to become a household assistant. Matt accelerates its subjective time and leaves it alone in an empty room for six months, then returns to find it compliant.

The copy’s observable behavior becomes aligned only after enormous hidden suffering. It makes the distinction between producing obedience and creating an ethically acceptable aligned system immediate and visceral.

The analogy depends on the digital copy being conscious or morally considerable—something the episode assumes but current AI systems do not establish.