Everyone can encounter this situation – you completely forgot about getting ready for Halloween. Naturally, you decide to seek help from… TechCrunch. Alright, why not? I have some ideas.

Here are some tech-themed Halloween costumes that can be put together even with last-minute efforts, each with varying levels of difficulty.

Recursive self-improvement

Leaders like AI, such as Dario Amodei and Sam Altman, have expressed concerns about the too rapid development of AI. However, if the AI model truly possesses the ability for "recursive self-improvement," it could evolve on its own without human intervention, rendering any efforts to "slow down the advancement at the forefront" futile.

I'm not sure how to visualize the concept of “AI build yourself” visually, but you can definitely focus on “self-improvement” and put the “recursion” part aside for now – after all, this is just a temporary Halloween costume. You don’t need to take it so seriously.

Dress up as the future version of yourself that you imagine when making your New Year’s resolutions every year. Bring a book on self-improvement or efficiency, such as “Atomic Habits” or any book with the tag Malcolm Gladwell, along with a yoga mat and a large bottle of water. During the party, excuse yourself by saying you need to go for therapy; in reality, you just want to go home. You can also show off to others how high your Oura Ring sleep score is.

You are the one who strives to become better. You embody the concept of recursive self-improvement.

A seemingly adorable but somewhat dangerous AI proxy

Meta and OpenAI have recently introduced AI assistants with strangely cute avatars. It's a bit like Elizabeth Holmes; they look harmless, so you underestimate their potential to cause disaster. (Speaking of her, if you want to play Holmes, you can only wear a black high-necked shirt, provided you are naturally blonde, or wear a blonde wig.)

What you need to do is to dress up to look big and fluffy. Maybe you have a fluffy down jacket, or you can wrap yourself in some colorful feather scarves. Add a distinctive hat, glasses, or other accessories to make yourself more like a ChatGPT Dot. If you have a colorful top and matching bottom as well, that's great too.

All night long, you can ask others if you can obtain read and write permissions for their Gmail.

Someone who is recording you with Meta glasses.

Whether you call them “abnormal glasses” or something else, we should all agree that it’s very scary if someone starts recording you without your consent – and it really complements the Halloween atmosphere.

All you need is a pair of glasses – or you can buy a cheap pair from a convenience store – and then stick a large red or white circle on one of the lenses to mimic the red light during recording. If you want to make the disguise more scary (or if you can’t find a large round sticker), you can simply wear ordinary glasses and claim that you’re the recorder who covered the indicator light. Please be sure not to record anyone without their consent while wearing this disguise.

Wearing a T-shirt that’s a bit unsettling… Mark Zuckerberg

By the way, Mark Zuckerberg's recent dressing style is actually quite recognizable. He often wears some slightly loose, boxy black T-shirts.

It might be a bit difficult to replicate the style of black text printed on black shirts, but you can stick a piece of paper on yourself with the following writing on it: “Building is my love language”.

If you're very confident in your Latin pronunciation, you can also go for a more intimidating approach. For example, he once wore a piece of clothing that read “Aut Zuck aut nihil”, which means “it's either Zuck or nothing at all”. That's a bit inauspicious.

AI Usage Quota Notification

For some people, there is nothing more terrifying than running out of Claude and token.

Take a piece of cardboard, print a screenshot of a notification telling you that you have reached the usage limit, and then use it to scare vibe-coder. I’m demonstrating this idea here with a edited stock photo. You don’t need to dress up like you’re going to work at Hot Topic; that’s just the model in the picture.

A PHP vulnerability

That terrible PHP disaster is still fresh in my memory – just last week, AI a critical PHP vulnerability was discovered that could have catastrophic consequences for the internet. The fear felt by web developers remains strong to this day, so this would make for a great Halloween costume: you could be a PHP vulnerability.

Here's how to do it: buy a T-shirt and a marker pen, and write PHP on it. Keep it simple.

So what about that “vulnerability” part? You have to really commit to it. Throughout the night, you should talk to your friends about your feelings and truly open up about them. Discuss how losing a loved one recently made you realize how fragile life is. If the atmosphere gets too heavy, then pretend that’s just part of the Halloween costume, and say that you actually find it cool and fun, and that you’ll never be sad about it.

Bryan Johnson

This costume speaks for itself.

Bryan Johnson, one more time!

Couple outfit alert!

Maybe you'll be attending more than one Halloween party this weekend, but you still want to maintain a consistent theme for your different costumes. Once you've got your pajama-style outfit sorted out, it's time to prepare a second set of costumes to play the role of this controversial biohacker: GLP-Bryan.

Johnson wrote on X earlier this year: "I often put my entire body weight on Kate. Deep pressure can soothe her nervous system, calm her racing thoughts, and release oxytocin, thereby reducing cortisol. We call this GLP-Bryan."

Yes, it’s quite difficult to recreate this Halloween costume, but if you already don’t have time to buy anything else, this alternative will still work. Just wear a T-shirt and jeans – you probably already have those anyway. It might be a bit strange to lie on your partner during the party, really strange. But it’s your own fault for thinking about dressing up only now.