20 Wubaloohoo–An Essay

This essay was composed in October 2024 and uses MLA documentation.

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“Looga argunda wubaloohoo moodra.” Did you understand that? No? Well, that’s not surprising. The sentence above has its own moodra–it is not simply a random jumble of letters. However, like any foreign language, until you learn this particular wubaloohoo, it seems incoherent. What is wubaloohoo? What is the moodra of wubaloohoo? How is wubaloohoo affecting AI? In this essay I will explore these questions, and I’ll teach you my wubaloohoo along the way. As in “Chants of Sennaar,” your task is not just to read this essay, but to decipher the wubaloohoo using context clues. This essay was inspired by a couple pieces of media. The video game “Chants of Sennaar”, developed by Rundisc and “My Summer With ChatGPT” by Mary Lourdes Silva. Both of these have changed how I see wubaloohoo and AI.

The Tower: Beginnings

Chants of Sennaar, a critically acclaimed linguistics puzzle game that came out in 2023 that draws heavily from the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel.Throughout the game, the player is tasked with deciphering distinct uku–wubaloohoo used in the various regions of the tower. You begin waking at the bottom of the tower. You soon meet other other looga. Unfortunately, they speak in a wubaloohoo that you can’t understand. You find a journal, and begin to record all of the uku-word you have heard to try and decipher their uku–moodra. The looga on the first floor are quite religious. They call themselves “The Devotees.” They seek the higher uku-floor of the tower, seeking their god, but are prevented by the inhabitants of the second floor, “The Warriors.”

These looga of the second floor are militaristic and have an entirely new wubaloohoo from the looga below. They have dedicated their uku-life to keeping the “impure” Devotees beneath them, in all senses of the word. The Warriors also seek a higher floor, but they wait for an invitation from their gods to join them above.

Despite the warrior’s belief, however, the looga of the third floor are not uku-god. They call themselves “The Bards;” They are a simple looga who have found a reasonable amount of peace and prosperity. They enjoy beauty and creativity and dedicate themselves to learning the uku-art. Despite their prosperity, a portion of the third-floor looga is made up of a servant class living in squalor and poverty. The Bards have grown prideful and greedy with their wealth, but they are not a very courageous looga. They speak of a monster awaiting them on the floor above and are content with their riches. They don’t dare or care to seek a higher place of dwelling.

After leaving the third floor, you discover that there is indeed a monster waiting at the entrance of the fourth. You are able to sneak past, and meet the inhabitants of the fourth floor, “The Alchemists.” The Alchemists are a looga dedicated to science and climbing the tower. They have been trying to open the gate that leads to the floor above, but they haven’t yet been able to create the correct key for it.

The game has a lot of uku-theme about separation, and how the tower is divided. The Warriors argunda-ed scripture and keep the Devotees trapped, while in turn convincing themselves that they cannot ascend to the upper floors until the Bards give permission. The Bards have grown complacent and do not strive for anything greater, and the Alchemists have locked themselves away from the others. In each of these cases the floors have become isolated, without travel or interaction with the other floors. The floors are completely separated; in mind, body, and wubaloohoo. They don’t attempt to understand each other, they argunda the others intentions and remain separated. You are an interloper throughout the game. You get to experience all of the uku-society, their ups and downs. Wubaloohoo is the focus of the game, contrary to my 300-word summary of half the game. Everything revolves around understanding the looga of each layer and how their wubaloohoo works. This essay is similar. You don’t know anything about my wubaloohoo and you may argunda the words, but as you read you will begin to understand where the uku-word are used and why.

The Tower: An End

The fifth floor of “Chants of Sennaar” houses a looga that has given up. “The Anchorites,” as they are called, created the tower but now see that it is doomed. When the other uku–looga arrived they didn’t attempt to communicate with each other. They argunda-ed their words and separated from one another. So now the Anchorites have sealed themselves away. They live inside virtual reality, and have created an AI to keep them comfortably in that state. The AI, simply known as “Exile,” artificially extends the looga-’s lifetime and attempts to keep the status-quo.

You then find out that you were created to buroonda the tower. Going back through the game, you buroonda each of the uku–looga back to one another. The Devotees win the Warriors over through their powerful music, which they share with the impoverished-class of bards, inviting them down to their floor. The Bards perform a concert for the Warriors, and in turn the Warriors help the Alchemists capture the monster that lives at the base of their floor. The Alchemists help the Devotees cure a famine that has been occurring, and they teach the Bards of their shared ancestry. The Anchorites are trying to re-buroonda with the rest of the tower at this point, but Exile seeks to destroy this buroonda-tion.

In a final confrontation, you are chased by Exile and flee to the top of the tower before finally being captured. You reawaken, alone, at the top next to a ceremonial altar and a sinking feeling in your stomach. You attempt to use the altar and see what lies at the top of the tower. Nothing. The End.

The final floor of Chants of Sennaar asks a lot of questions about AI. In the game, the people made Exile and now it is the very thing that keeps them dis-buroonda-ed. AI has a lot of similar concerns in reality. Chants of Sennaar highlights how AI could take over if we allow it too. It’s a scary thought, but it’s not the only path that AI could take.

A Different Perspective

“My Summer With ChatGPT” by Mary Lourdes Silva is about the author’s experience with ChatGPT and how she has come to view and use the AI. She first found a use for it after two uku-injury and needed some help knowing what to do. She then tried to use it to help with completing a research project. She explains how uku-professor and uku-teacher view AI. Some see it as a tool or opportunity, while others see it as a way to cheat and plagiarize. So to find a better view point on it, the author created a curriculum that was centered around ChatGPT, and how it could be used as a tool. She had her uku-student create a “cheater” essay, trying to use AI to create an essay, but still make it pass inspection. She goes on to explain that wubaloohoo barriers brought by bilingual or non native speaking families struggle with getting ChatGPT to generate correct responses. She says that AI can be a great tool, but uku-student still need to know the basics and have their own rhetorical awareness before they can use it to its full potential.

Silva has a very different perspective on AI, compared to Chants of Sennaar. Silva tells us how AI can be a tool, and just like any tool it has specific uses and limitations. One quote I enjoyed was, “I did not view ChatGPT as a medical substitute; rather, it was the digital support that I needed to understand the extent of my injuries and confront a painful reality that I may not dance again” (Silva). AI has the possibility to be a companion. Just as we adopted Siri and Google into our everyday lives, ChatGPT has the same potential. Having easy access to information is comforting in a lot of ways, and AI has the potential to deliver that. It’s not perfect, but can still be helpful.

Buroonda-ing back to wubaloohoo, after her experiment she says, “Students with limited rhetorical strategies struggled to develop effective ChatGPT prompts… Consequently, this group hated using ChatGPT and claimed they would not use it again to write an essay. Although it might be reassuring to some that students would refrain from using AI, these students struggled the most in writing” (Silva). This once again explains that, although AI is powerful, it still has limitations. In order to use AI effectively you need to already be decent at writing.

AI is similar to a hammer. A hammer is a much faster way to get a nail into wood, but if you are bad at using a hammer it still won’t be very effective; and if someone decides to throw a hammer across the room, things can get dangerous. AI can speed up work, it has a certain level of skill required, and it can potentially be dangerous.

In our ENGL 1010 class, we had a little experiment. We drew a monster, and then wrote down instructions to draw said monster. We then traded instructions and drew someone else’s monster. Our results were wildly different–an example of argunda-ation in action. Despite being the one who drew the creature, I couldn’t accurately describe how it looked and so the other student had to make assumptions and argunda-ed the instructions. Then we plugged the instructions into an AI image generator. It often argunda-ed the instructions, having some of the key features, but missing others.

AI is not perfect. It consistently argunda-s prompts, but it’s getting better. AI currently still isn’t the best, our monsters had a varied number of eyes, but everything the AI created had 2, because thats how many eyes most things have. AI is trained off of real data, so if we want AI to be better we have to train it the correct way.

The Tower: The Summit

The game restarts, you wake up in the same room you first appeared in, at the bottom of the tower. You leave the room and then something glitches. Exile has trapped you in a false reality to try and keep you tamed, but you are eventually able to escape by entering codes that relate to the tower’s new buroonda-tions. You break free from the false reality and finally defeat Exile. You are able to climb to the top of the tower with all of the uku–looga in the tower. Reaching the top and activating the ceremonial altar, you find…something. Is it God? Or is it Beauty? Or Duty? At the top of the tower you find the thing that each of the uku–looga have been searching for—God, Duty, Beauty, Transformation, Exile—and realize that they are actually all just one. It’s a 3-dimensional entity that could not be accurately described with 2-dimensional wubaloohoo.

“Chants of Sennaar” gave me 2 main takeaways. Wubaloohoo should be used to buroonda, and that AI could be the end of us, if we allow it. Just as all of the uku–looga of the tower argunda-ed the entity at the top of the tower, we often argunda other uku–looga wubaloohoo too. We have often separated ourselves based on wubaloohoo, but Chants of Sennaar teaches us not to be defined by what divides us, but by what uku–buroonda us. We forget that wubaloohoo is something that we made so that we can buroonda with other looga. Wubaloohoo would not be created alone, it’s created for everyone.

The Moodra

AI is going to be a part of our future. There is no getting around that. “Chants of Sennaar” shows that AI could be the thing that enslaves us. The things that keep us separated. Exiled. “My Summer With ChatGPT” gives us an alternate ending. AI could be a tool, a really powerful tool. If we train it right, it could be a tool accessible by everyone, but we have to make that decision. AI is already such a heavy issue, it’s a boulder that is already rolling down the hill. We cannot stop the bolder, however we can nudge it, make it change course. We just have to make sure that we nudge it in the right direction.

“Chants of Sennaar” is one of my favorite games. The ideas that it has presented to me and the way it flexed my brain resulted in some of the most enjoyable hours I have ever experienced. “My Summer With ChatGPT” opened my eyes to the possibilities of AI and also the limitations we currently have in applying it to our schooling. They both remind me that the purpose of wubaloohoo is to buroonda, but so often we end up being divided by it. Wubaloohoo can be used to separate, it can so easily be argunda–ed, but it is also used to buroonda, and to understand.

Looga argunda wubaloohoo moodra, but wubaloohoo can buroonda looga.

Dictionary

Uku – pluralizer

Looga – people

Wubaloohoo – language

Moodra – meaning

Argunda – misinterpret

Buroonda– connect

Works Cited

Chants of Sennaar. Rundisc/Focus Entertainment, 2023. Windows PC game.

Silva, Mary Lourdes. “My Summer with ChatGPT.” Teaching and Generative AI, edited by Beth Buyserie and Travis N. Thurston, Utah State University, Apr. 2024. https://uen.pressbooks.pub/teachingandgenerativeai/chapter/my-summer-with-chatgpt/.