Oswald Wiener’s reflections on the tension between dandyism, paranoia, and AI, as an early foreshadowing of the current problems faced by large language models — namely, autophagy, hallucinations, and the Habsburg effect
Hans-Christian Dany 

Oswald Wiener is not easily accessible. His texts defy easy consumption. In their unwieldiness, they form ambivalent figures that allow for shifting interpretations. Thus, the ​“bio-adapter” at the end of *Die Verbesserung von Mitteleuropa* can be read as a seductive helmet that softens the wearer’s consciousness through personalized experiences of pleasure, only to ultimately absorb it. Manipulative vampirism, as a paranoid-erotic interpretation of the relationship with a machine that would consume humans in their self-governance, has repeatedly seemed an apt metaphor for the dynamics of alienation. The current problems of artificial intelligence with Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD), such as the so-called Habsburg Effect, now shift the focus more strongly back to the process of exhaustion taking place within the bio-adapter. Under the helmet, desires short-circuit themselves in a self-referential manner until, in the heat of their inbreeding, they die of heat death.