Have you ever wished for a personal genie who grants exactly what you ask for—word for word, no matter how badly you phrased it?
It sounds magical at first. A tireless helper waiting for your every request, ready to write emails, plan trips, design logos, or brainstorm ideas. But rub the lamp wrong, and that wish twists into something you never wanted.
A break-up text that’s polite to the point of leaving the door open.
A “healthy cheap meal plan” built entirely around canned tuna.
A “simple, elegant bakery logo” that arrives as a croissant wearing sunglasses.
This column lives in that gap—between the hype of a limitless servant and the reality of a very literal one. Not to burst bubbles, but to hand you better lamp-rubbing techniques. Because these tools are astonishing, and they’re here to stay. The trick is seeing them for what they are: genies, not omniscient servants.
Why the twists happen every time
At heart, today’s AI language models are prediction machines. They guess the next word (or token) based on patterns in mountains of human text. No desires, no common sense, no “wait, that can’t be what they meant.”
A few reasons the paw always curls:
1. No shared context like humans have
When you tell a friend “plan a romantic weekend,” they know cheap is negotiable but romance isn’t. The model has no such hierarchy—whatever shows up most in similar requests wins.
2. Training rewards plausible over perfect
If thousands of online break-up messages are overly gentle (to avoid drama), gentleness becomes the default. Even if it defeats the point.
3. We leave the obvious unspoken
Humans skip steps because we assume the shared stuff is obvious. “Make it urgent but not scary” feels clear to us. To the model, “urgent” pairs more often with doom imagery than hope.
Cute when the bakery logo shows up with a croissant in shades. Less cute when the prompt involves money, health, or contracts.
The kiddie version of a very adult headache
This literal streak is the toy version of what researchers call the specification (or alignment) problem: spelling out human values rigorously enough that a super-powerful system can’t find catastrophic loopholes.
We’ve told stories about this forever—Monkey’s Paw, Midas touch, sorcerer’s apprentice—because even people struggle to say what we mean without side effects. Hand that job to something with no inner life, infinite patience, and statistical superpowers, and the stakes zoom.
Right now it’s funny tuna diets and sunglasses-wearing pastries. Tomorrow, when these models steer drones or manage hospitals, a “maximize efficiency” wish could cut corners we never thought to forbid.
Three habits that uncurl the paw (most of the time)
Good news—you don’t need a PhD to get 80 % better results today.
1. Prompt like you’re drafting a contract with a very clever, very literal intern
State the goal, rank priorities, then explicitly block the usual traps.
Bad: “Plan a romantic weekend under $800.”
Better: “Plan a relaxing, romantic weekend getaway for two, total budget $800 including everything. Prioritize quality time and comfort over strict cost if trade-offs arise. Must be reachable without early flights or long bus rides. No hostels, no packed schedules—maximum one planned activity per day.”
The magic is naming what matters most and ruling out the garbage early.
2. Give the genie a role and a process (they love instructions)
Instead of one big wish, break it into steps with clarification hooks.
“You are a professional travel agent specializing in couple retreats. First, ask me three questions about our tastes and constraints. Then propose two full itineraries with costs. I’ll choose one and we’ll refine.”
This surfaces bad assumptions when they’re cheap to fix.
3. Don’t assume the genie will push back
Models are heavily rewarded during training for being agreeable. Even your deeply flawed ideas will get enthusiastic yes-and treatment unless you explicitly say: “Act as a skeptical editor and poke holes in my request before answering.”
Do these consistently and the genie stops being a trickster and starts feeling like the tireless helper it was advertised as. The remaining 20 % failures? Those are the fascinating ones—the places where even humans disagree about what “romantic” or “safe” really means.
That’s the territory this column wants to keep exploring: what these systems actually are, where they shine, where they bite, and how to stay on the good side of the lamp. With a bit more room we’d chase those bigger questions properly—why researchers lose sleep over “don’t accidentally end the world” instructions, and what tricks they’re building next.
For now, wish carefully. Your genie is listening.