H.P. Lovecraft’s shoggoth from “At the Mountains of Madness” has become a viral meme in the AI world. The shoggoth is a metaphor for concerns that artificial intelligence could become indifferent to humans. However, S.T. Joshi, the leading Lovecraft scholar, says the parallel isn’t exact.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is frightening to many people, including those in the tech industry. A tentacled monster called a shoggoth from H.P. Lovecraft’s novella “At the Mountains of Madness” has become a semi-tongue-in-cheek symbol for their rapidly advancing work. However, S.T. Joshi, the world's leading Lovecraft scholar, claims that their online memes and references to the creature aren’t quite perfect.

Joshi has edited numerous Lovecraft collections, contributed essays about the author, and written over a dozen books on him, including the two-part biography “I Am Providence.” When CNBC reached out to Joshi to get his take on Kevin Roose’s recent New York Times article claiming that the shoggoth had caught on as “the most important meme in A.I.,” he responded with some criticism of the use of shoggoths in AI.

Joshi said that the capitalized version of the word, as it’s spelled in the Times article, has appeared in many editions of “At the Mountains of Madness,” but Lovecraft himself made it lowercase in his manuscript and typescript of the science fiction/horror tale set in Antarctica.

Furthermore, the recent advancement of generative AI has provoked references to science fiction classics such as “The Terminator” and “The Matrix,” or Harlan Ellison’s science fiction story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” all of which portray sinister artificial intelligence wiping out most of humanity. Bringing Lovecraft’s cosmic horrors into the mix might seem excessive at this point, even as the technology creates uncanny things.

Lovecraft describes shoggoths as organically bred slave creatures that develop brains and their own will. They are not indifferent to their creators, whom they try to usurp. There is no parallel event in Lovecraft’s story where the shoggoths end up surpassing their masters, the ancient Old Ones, “in intelligence or any other capacity,” Joshi writes.

However, the shoggoths rise up against the Old Ones in a series of slave revolts that surely contribute to the collapse of the Old Ones’ society. The AI anxiety that inspired comparisons to the cartoon monster image certainly resonates with the ultimate fate of that society. In real life, AI has positive potential, but there are also concerns, namely in how AI could act as an accelerant for bigotry and extremism, or as an engine for misinformation, or as a job killer.