We are only a few years away from an era in which artificial intelligence can create compelling stories, songs, essays, poems, novels, and even movies. For many of us, these recently implemented features already feel like a necessity in our daily lives, but you might be surprised to think how many people have long believed that computers can already perform these functions. We certainly owe some of that belief partly to the role that effectively sentient machines have played in popular fiction since at least the early 20th century. Revisiting the works of George Orwell 1984we even find a device very similar to today’s large-scale language model used by the Ministry of Truth, the employer of protagonist Winston Smith.
Within the ministry, there are “a series of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment in general. Here, there are trashy newspapers with little information on them except sports, crime, and astrology, sensational 5-cent novels, sex-oozing movies, versicators, Much later in the novel, Smith hears a truly kaleidoscopic hit song sung by a woman from the lowest class of this dystopian England. The song is sung by women from the lowest echelons of this dystopian England, whose despicableness is what frees them from the scrutiny that Big Brother’s vast surveillance system keeps on its ostensibly privileged party members.
In the state’s view, all the “proles” really need is freedom to satisfy their vices and a constant stream of appeasing media. Versicator extrusions may remind you of the ever-increasing amount of “AI slop” we currently have. The possibility of them flooding the Internet, often created with minimal human intervention, has recently become a matter of public concern. What’s even more chilling is that if such low-effort, high-volume content wasn’t really popular, it wouldn’t have gained this much presence. Like the junk culture spewed out by the Ministry of Truth, AI slop reflects the demanding nature of its people more than the malice (or at least disregard) of those in power.
Perhaps we can tentatively write this down in the “Orwell was right” column. Given the actual technological developments, even Isaac Asimov might be convinced to give it to him. Here at Open Culture, we recently featured a critique of Asimov. 1984 It is a poor prediction of the future, especially from a technological perspective. This work was written in 1980, at the end of the “AI winter,” one of the fallow periods in artificial intelligence research. A boom soon followed, but the truly amazing developments didn’t occur until the 2020s, some 30 years after Asimov’s death. Orwell was probably extrapolating from the distracting, disposable entertainment of 1940s Britain when describing the versificator. Even if his readers could not believe the idea that such things could be created automatically, more than a few probably agreed with his diagnosis of its quality. Humanity’s collective intelligence may now face its most formidable challenger, but individual human discernment is more valuable than ever.
via Boing Boing
Related content:
Isaac Asimov criticized George Orwell’s 1984, calling it “not science fiction but distorted nostalgia for a past that never existed.”
George Orwell predicted that cameras would be watching us in our homes. He never imagined that we would be willing to buy and install it ourselves
Aldous Huxley to George Orwell: My hellish vision of the future is better than yours (1949)
Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke predicts the future in 1964: artificial intelligence, instant global communication, remote work, the singularity, and more
Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages and cultures. he is the author of the newsletter books about cities books as well Home page (I won’t summarize Korea) and korean newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
