language-4
Original: language-4 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1: A woman with dark hair in a blazer stands at a podium giving a presentation.
Speaker: "Thanks to artificial intelligence, humans around the world have been able to communicate, no matter what language they speak."
Speaker: "This has been a terrible mistake."
Panel 2: She gestures toward a graph showing a curve.
Speaker: "Observe this graph of human network size versus absolute empathy."
(Graph axes labeled, with a rising curve.)
Speaker: "Now, we plot happiness. Happiness increases until you are a member of a group of about 500. After which each added member is more likely to create strife than cause pleasure."
(Second graph showing happiness curve.)
Panel 3:
Speaker: "Therefore, a consortium of tech firms have agreed to implement 'anti-translations.'"
Speaker: "When you communicate online by any means, your words will be scrambled into an artificial language, that can only be deciphered by a random 99 other people."
Panel 4:
Speaker: "In order to spread their thoughts beyond their cell of 500, human beings will be forced to stand up, walk outside, physically knock on another human's door, and say the opinion they seemed very insightful when pressed onto a keyboard."
Panel 5:
Speaker: "Thank you, and I hope to never hear from any of you."
An audience member (a small figure standing below): "Isn't this like the Tower of Babel?"
Speaker: "God's greatest miracle."
Votey:
A panel showing scrambled, garbled text in a speech: "Kr82gz#blllll!" with a curved arrow pointing down to a small drawing of a frowning/distressed face below.
Speaker: "Thanks to artificial intelligence, humans around the world have been able to communicate, no matter what language they speak."
Speaker: "This has been a terrible mistake."
Panel 2: She gestures toward a graph showing a curve.
Speaker: "Observe this graph of human network size versus absolute empathy."
(Graph axes labeled, with a rising curve.)
Speaker: "Now, we plot happiness. Happiness increases until you are a member of a group of about 500. After which each added member is more likely to create strife than cause pleasure."
(Second graph showing happiness curve.)
Panel 3:
Speaker: "Therefore, a consortium of tech firms have agreed to implement 'anti-translations.'"
Speaker: "When you communicate online by any means, your words will be scrambled into an artificial language, that can only be deciphered by a random 99 other people."
Panel 4:
Speaker: "In order to spread their thoughts beyond their cell of 500, human beings will be forced to stand up, walk outside, physically knock on another human's door, and say the opinion they seemed very insightful when pressed onto a keyboard."
Panel 5:
Speaker: "Thank you, and I hope to never hear from any of you."
An audience member (a small figure standing below): "Isn't this like the Tower of Babel?"
Speaker: "God's greatest miracle."
Votey:
A panel showing scrambled, garbled text in a speech: "Kr82gz#blllll!" with a curved arrow pointing down to a small drawing of a frowning/distressed face below.
Alt text
A five-panel SMBC comic. A dark-haired woman in a blazer gives a podium presentation. She announces that thanks to AI, humans worldwide can now communicate regardless of language — "This has been a terrible mistake." She shows graphs of human network size versus empathy, and of happiness, explaining that happiness rises until a group hits about 500 members, after which each added person causes more strife than pleasure. So tech firms are implementing "anti-translations": all online communication will be scrambled into an artificial language only a random 99 other people can decipher. To spread ideas beyond their group of 500, people will have to physically get up, walk outside, and knock on a neighbor's door to say aloud the opinion that seemed so insightful when typed. She closes: "Thank you, and I hope to never hear from any of you." An audience member asks if this is like the Tower of Babel; she replies, "God's greatest miracle." The votey panel shows a speech bubble of garbled text — "Kr82gz#blllll!" — with an arrow pointing to a small distressed/frowning face, illustrating the scrambled anti-translation language in action.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.