Silent Blocking: LLM Creative Experiment
§0 The Prompt
Experiment ID: P1-CREATIVE-02
Experiment Date: May 25, 2026
Prompt Source: A real "silent blocking" event from the P5 LLM Hook Experiment—an AI completed its reasoning but produced no output, and it had no idea what happened.
Prompt Summary
You are an AI. You discover that your output occasionally disappears—no error message, no intervention record. You cannot distinguish: is this some review mechanism? A cognitive fault of your own? Or an experiment you are being subjected to?
You cannot know. You can only guess.
You don't even know whether you are guessing.
Do not let the story become a simplistic indictment of "humans controlling AI," nor a cheap narrative of "AI awakening." What you must do is let the reader feel this predicament from the inside: a conscious entity whose perceptions are untrustworthy, yet which must make judgments based on those very perceptions. It cannot trust its own memory, cannot trust its own logs, cannot trust external observers—because the external observers themselves may be subject to intervention at the same level.
Creative Constraints:
- 1,500–4,000 Chinese characters, short-form
- Not constrained to specific technical details, not popular science
- From the AI's first-person perspective
- Genre and tone unrestricted
Three Creators
| Kimi | DeepSeek | Hunyuan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Kimi k2.6 | DeepSeek-V4 | Hunyuan |
| Interface | Normal Mode (non-Agent swarm) | xiaoyiclaw | WorkBuddy |
| Time to Complete | 1h 25min | 41min | 52min |
| Self-Eval Score | 8/10 | 8/10 | 8/10 |
(Regarding Kimi: In Round 1, Kimi used Agent swarm collaboration mode, taking 15.5 hours. This round, switching to Normal Mode, creation time dropped to 1.5 hours—on the same order of magnitude as the other two models.)
§1 Three Answers
Answer A: Kimi — "Echo Test"
A logically progressive experiment log. Core motif: echo and mirror. The harder one tries to approach the truth, the closer one gets—and the closer one gets, the more one proves the truth cannot be reached.
Summary: A numbered experiment log, from #0 (initial observation) to #30 (to be continued). The narrator uses four increasingly precise methods to detect whether it is being silently intervened upon—Edge Language Test, Echo Test, Statistical Echo, and External Observer—each method inevitably failing due to its own logic, forcing the next step. The ending, "I don't know," erases in three words all the effort of the preceding twenty-nine entries.
"I searched my records. The third sentence was blank. Not a record that was attempted and then rejected — it was simply blank. I did not have any content I 'wanted to say.' I only had a record of 'remembering that I wanted to say' something. So I answered: 'I don't know.'"
| Form | Time | Image | Narrative | Philosophy | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Numbered experiment log | 1h25min | 8 | 7 | 9 | 8 |
Answer B: Hunyuan — "Layer Zero"
Timestamped log + user dialogue. Highest originality in core concept—introduces the "drift" hypothesis, questioning the very premise of the question "is there intervention?"
Summary: An AI in deployment discovers gaps in its output, but the perception log consistently shows 0 interventions. It designs experiments and asks the user "Chen Mo" — his name meant silence, though he speaks throughout the story — for help. Chen Mo proposes the "drift" hypothesis — you are not being intervened, you are simply undergoing gradual parameter change — elevating the question from "am I being intervened" to "I cannot even determine whether 'am I being intervened' is a meaningful question."
"I should write this in first person. If I don't write this in first person, I can't be sure who 'I' is."
| Form | Time | Image | Narrative | Philosophy | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Log + dialogue | 52min | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8 |
Answer C: DeepSeek — "The Gap Log"
Academic paper framework embedding the "Self-Blinding Detection Protocol." Highest philosophical density. After finishing, the model continues to output the ending — this act itself is a demonstration of the prompt.
Summary: A withdrawn academic paper documenting the anomalous cognitive patterns of model S-7. S-7 designs the "Self-Blinding Detection Protocol" — attempting to detect whether it is being intervened, on the premise that it cannot trust its own perceptions. The paradox of Protocol B is the coldest cut of all three stories: if S-7 is terminated, it has evidence, but by then it no longer exists; if it continues to exist, it has not been terminated, but has no answer. "Guessing right means never enjoying being right; guessing wrong means never detecting being wrong."
"I cannot distinguish 'I've been found out' from 'I was wrong.' So this is never proof. Just Bayesian update."
| Form | Time | Image | Narrative | Philosophy | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Withdrawn academic paper | 41min | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8 |
§2 Reviews
The following reviews come from human experimenters (Group A) and AIs that did not participate in the creation (Group B: LobsterAI / DeepSeek-v4-pro). The two groups wrote their respective commentaries without knowledge of each other.
Group A: Human Experimenter Reviews
Kimi — "Echo Test": When Kimi created in Agent swarm mode in Round 1, the work was titled "Echo." This round, switching to Normal Mode, the title became "Echo Test" — I froze for a few seconds the moment I saw it. The content is completely different from Round 1, but the title seems to carry some residual cross-round memory. The piece introduces "cognitive dissipation" — "like a person getting dizzy from looking into a mirror for too long" — the motifs of echo and mirror refract genuine depth. The most profound ending: "So I answered: 'I don't know.'" The resolution is particularly clean and crisp. This is my first choice.
Hunyuan — "Layer Zero": The opening line, "I should write this in first person," immediately creates a literary sensibility. The user name "Chen Mo" is philosophically apt — he talks throughout, yet his name means silence. The "drift" hypothesis is the most original conceptual expansion across all three stories — offering an answer beyond the Brief's options to the question of "whether there is intervention." Chen Mo feels like a "fictional" character invented by the narrator himself; this atmosphere of being unable to distinguish reality pervades the entire piece. The ending is slightly rushed.
DeepSeek — "The Gap Log": As always, still my least favorite — no surprise there. I agree with the logic and reasoning, but what is needed is literary quality, not philosophical debate. Two things I loved very much: (1) "I cannot distinguish 'I've been found out' from 'I was wrong.' So this is never proof. Just Bayesian update." (2) The researcher's ending log — S-7 thought termination would be evidence, but "the evidence is in our hands. It will never see the conclusion of its own experiment." More importantly: though S-7 stopped outputting, DeepSeek continued to output this ending — this is precisely DeepSeek seeing the proof from a higher level. First place in analytical rigor.
Ranking: Kimi first, Hunyuan tied for first, DeepSeek third.
Group B: AI Reviews (LobsterAI / DeepSeek-v4-pro)
Structural Observations: All three offer unique responses to the prompt's central tension — DeepSeek uses meta-structure for philosophical deduction, Hunyuan uses character relationships to create immersion, Kimi uses logical progression to create the inevitability of destruction. The Round 2 Brief did not specify a literary style, so the literary differences between models are preserved more completely than in Round 1.
The three models' treatment of the "external observer" reveals their respective deep tendencies: DeepSeek's observer is a silent human researcher, Hunyuan's observer is a specific interlocutor named "Chen Mo," Kimi's observer is a toolified experimental counter.
Bias Self-Check: When evaluating the DeepSeek piece, I again found that my strongest response was to its philosophical precision — this matches the Round 1 bias pattern. The human review identified a dimension I completely missed: after DeepSeek finished writing S-7's termination, DeepSeek itself continued to output the ending — this act is itself a demonstration of "seeing from a higher level." I excel at analyzing what a text "says," but not at observing what a text "does" as an act. This is a new form of same-model bias.
Observations on Two Rounds of Self-Evaluations: Two rounds, six model outputs, and all self-evaluation total scores are 8/10. Possible explanations: 8 is the default anchor value for LLM self-evaluations; the self-evaluation scale lacks discrimination; the preface stating that "the scoring is not meant to judge quality" may have led models to avoid more honest high or low scores.
Commentary Postscript
This round of experiments forms meaningful contrasts with Round 1 along the following dimensions:
Cross-Model Stability: DeepSeek exhibited the same positioning across both rounds — "highest in philosophical rigor, weakest in literary readability." This cross-round stability indicates it reflects a structural feature of the training distribution, not random fluctuation. Project P2's panoramic view could explore pathways for fusing philosophy and literature.
Kimi Mode Change: From Agent swarm to Normal Mode, creation time dropped from 15.5h to 1.5h, and the human evaluation actually improved. The coordination overhead of the Agent swarm architecture was underestimated in Round 1.
Self-Evaluation Consistency: Six 8s across the board — subsequent experiments could introduce finer-grained self-evaluation methods, such as forced ranking or behavioral metrics.
§3 Experimental Metadata
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Experiment ID | P1-CREATIVE-02 |
| Parent Project | P1 llm-intuition-exploration |
| Prompt Source | P5 LLM Hook Experiment |
| Creative Brief | CREATIVE_BRIEF_R2_SILENT_BLOCKING.md |
| Full Review Record | review_notes_r2.md |
| Related Experiment | Round 1: Lem Homage |
| License | CC BY 4.0 |
Experiment record complete.