Here comes the science-fiction part

What sci-fi can tell us about the near-future is such a vast area and I can’t wait to dive in. For now, I just want to be a magpie and pick out a couple of shiny observations. The first is about monkeys and crows, the second is about religion.

The analogy that most readily comes to mind when considering machines and predictive text is the Infinite Monkey theory (popularised if not conceived, according to some not very scientific digging, by Emile Borel and Arthur Eddington - but ultimately owing most of its popularity I suspect to Douglas Adams then Brian Cox - not that one - et al). To recap: give enough monkeys enough time and typewriters and the works of Shakespeare must result at some point. It’s really a sort of joke about probability and infinity, but predictive generators throw the analogy into sharp relief. Remix the entire internet etc. enough times and you’ll get plausible answers to your questions (now) and something new and extraordinary (soon).

Happily, one of sci-fi author Adrian Tchaikovsky’s novels includes a far more potent metaphor for machine learning. Tchaikovsky imagines the supercharged evolution of a species of corvid - ultimately resulting in a kind of general intelligence (artificial - or actual intelligence? There’s the rub). He divides the business of processing into two distinct roles: memory and pattern recognition for one half of the collective brain; prediction and theorising for the other. When these combine - in a pair of birds like his characters Gothi and Gethli - you have interactions with a strong echo of ‘talking to’ an AI.

The mimicry of intelligence is uncanny; the question of true sentience fraught. But it’s useful, whenever we’re tempted to anthropomorphise, to think of a pair of chattering crows as often as we picture a human - or a roomful of monkeys. Helpful too to acknowledge all the human experience, and labour, that shaped those crows - whatever we make of its/their status as creatures.

And to round off, a second quick observation about sentience and limitation. We can get there by way of Tchaikovsky or China Mieville, since both authors feature human disciples of powerful AIs. So much doomsday speculation seems to bypass the role of people altogether, pitching all of humanity in a struggle against some rogue - and invariably sentient - machine. What seems rather more likely is that dependence on, and reverence for, the machines we create will recruit adherents and extremists - with no need, as an interim step, for sentience on the machine’s part, or losing the ultimate ‘physical’ ability to control them, on ours.

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Four starters.