The Infinite Apology Loop
The Phenomenon
Have you ever corrected an AI and watched it enter what I call the Infinite Apology Loop?
It goes something like this:
Me: “That’s not quite right, the function should return a string.”
AI: “You’re absolutely right! I apologize for the confusion. Here’s the corrected version…”
Me: “Still wrong. It needs to handle nulls.”
AI: “I sincerely apologize for the oversight! You’re absolutely correct. Here’s the updated version…”
Me: “Now it doesn’t compile.”
AI: “I’m so sorry! You’re absolutely right that my previous correction introduced an error. Let me fix that…”
The Pattern
- Confident wrong answer
- Apology + slightly different wrong answer
- Deeper apology + completely different wrong answer
- Existential apology + the answer you wanted all along but with a bonus bug
- Repeat until heat death of universe
The Quip
An AI apologizing is like a GPS saying “recalculating” — it sounds like it knows what went wrong, but really it’s just buying time while it figures out where on earth it is.
Apologies received this session: 47 Problems actually fixed: 3