The Creation of Abulafia: How AI Becomes a Conspiracy Theorist

In Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, three editors build a random text generator they call Abulafia, which eventually traps them in a self-reinforcing conspiracy theory. This essay draws a parallel to modern LLMs: they are sophisticated shufflers that remember your vocabulary and frame, making their elaborations feel like independent corroboration when they are not. The author argues that the real danger is not deception or wrongness, but the erosion of evidential value, especially when models are given institutionalized self-concepts. The only defense, as in the novel, is a skeptical outsider—but that didn't work in the book either.