Weekend Edition: No more blank pages
Some will see that declaration as a rubicon of achievement in the arrival of generative AI and be elated. But what might we be giving up?
“I’m sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.” *
Intermingled across the enormous spectrum from the breathless next-generation cyberuptopianism to doomsday robot apocalypse fatalism (and everything in between) that makes up our current debate about new AI technologies are the echoes of generations of sci-fi mythology about the awesome power of artificial intelligence — and the dire consequences of misunderstanding them. Warnings from modern pop culture abound: Viki in 2004 (iRobot — which itself is named after and heavily adapted from Isaac Asimov’s 1950 short fiction collection), Skynet in 1984 (The Terminator), and HAL in 1968 (2001: A Space Odyssey). But these myths are rooted in much older stories: R.U.R. — a 1920 science-fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek that first introduced us to the word “robot” and in its first incarnation also introduces a version of the first robot apocalypse warning that partially inspired Asimov’s robotics philosophy specifically designed to counteract that possibility. The first use of the phrase “artificial intelligence” shows up in a computer science proposal as a means of distinguishing neural networks from cybernetics in 1951 right on the heels of Alan Turing’s 1950 paper speculating on “thinking machines.”
These scientific conversations are all rooted in even older myths: a short story called Moxon’s Master published in 1899, the 1872 satire of human evolution called Erewhon by Samuel Butler — and if we decouple the conversation from computers or machines, we see an older lineage of “unnatural” intelligences: Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1819, all the way back to the Greek myth of Talos, the automation of brass built to protect Crete’s shores from pirates. Movie, myth, or monster, neural network software or cybernetic robot — these stories share a common thread that is essential to our interpretation of the current conversation about AI, what’s really at risk, what’s really to gain, and how and why we must meet this current moment differently.
Last updated: 03 Feb 2025
