Hello from deep inside the bowels of my university’s grading software where I am up to my neck in barely paraphrased answers that only kind of fit the questions asked. But never mind about that. What I’m actually thinking about is how I wrongly I wrote the future.
Several years ago, I wrote a short story. It’s a fun little action piece with my take on some of science-fictions “big ideas.” These are the ideas that provide fertile ground for hundreds of writers across thousands of properties. And I really wanted to play with some of these “big ideas.”
In fact, I crammed so many “big ideas” into my story that I decided to re-write it as a novel. And then re-write it again as a young adult novel. And then re-write the third act so I could build a series. And then put it into a digital drawer where it could gather digital dust until the end of time, where it remains to this very day. But two of the “big ideas” in the book are still surprisingly relevant today.
The first of the “big ideas” in the story centered around artificial intelligence, an idea that looked nothing like it does today.
Among my early literary imprints sits a four-volume series called The A.I. Gang. In this series, a mysterious company gathers the world’s top scientists and their children and secrets them away on a small island to build the world’s first artificial intelligence. The kids of these scientists, all equally nerdy and plucky, are left largely to their own devices and they decide, as children do, to exact their revenge on their neglectful parents by beating them to the goal of creating an a.i. It’s a fun series, especially if you’re a nerdy and plucky kid who wants nothing more than to exact revenge on the world around him.
But this, more than any other source, sparked my interest in A.I. As I read on and read more, I saw two broad patterns in how sci-fi authors handled the ‘bots: they were either supremely intelligent, slightly alien versions of humans, or they were very smart machines who were limited in how human they could be - no creativity, no emotions. They were not everyday tools to be used to, oh, I dunno, write your English 101 essay assignment.
When my nephew was still just a little kid, he had these toys called Skylanders that just fascinated me. They arrived at about the same time Nintendo started making their Amiibo figures; Disney and other companies soon jumped on the bandwagon of NFC-equipped toys. These plastic figures have chips embedded in them that allow them to interact with digital content in a variety of ways. In both Skylander’s and Nintendo’s cases, having the figure and placing it near the video game controller would put that character into your game.
So, my particular version of this “big idea,” in my little science-fiction story, was that in the future, A.I.s would be small enough and mundane enough to exist inside toy-like figurines. You’d set them up for all kinds of everyday tasks - here’s one in the kitchen to talk you through a recipe just like Grandma would. Here’s one that comes equipped with a chessboard and teaches you how to play better. And, in my story, one would live inside a kind of dashboard figure and act as your navigator1.
Which brings me to the other “big idea” at work in my book: had you asked me, back in, say 2015, what the most disruptive tech of this decade would be, I would have answered that 3D printing is going to change everything.
3D printing is the little brother of another of science-fiction’s really big ideas: nanobots. In loads of different sf stories from novels to t.v. to movies, the grey goo, or nanites, or whatever is a kind of sludge that can be formed into anything and everything you need. We are a long, long way from nanobots, but 3D printing is getting cheap, fast, and good for limited values of any given one of the three.
So, had you asked, I would have told you that 3D printing would bankrupt toy makers like LEGO and Mattel because why would you buy a toy when you could print it at home? And super-cheap goods from China? Thing of the past. Need plates and spoons? Print them. How about a new pair of reading glasses? Print them. What about new boots? Print them. And so on and so forth. Anything and everything cheap and plastic you might need for your home could and would be printed on your home printer that you kept in the backroom right next to your old t.v. and beer fridge.
And well, here in 2023, 3D printing is an evolving and interesting field, but it’s a long, long way from taking down LEGO, much less China.
But that wasn’t my really, really big idea. No, my big idea was that you would create your own custom A.I.s that would live in figurines that you printed out on your home printer. For example, you and I decided we want to get better at Chess. So we each get out our A.I. generating tools and write A.I.s that teach us how to play Chess in the ways we like to be taught. And then, because you’re an Art Deco-loving, rococo-fetishizing maximalist, your bespoke Chess-master A.I. speaks with the deep tones and warm timbre and lives in a chessboard straight out of a Victorian parlor, while mine, because I am a twelve-year-old in a grown-man’s body, looks like Marilyn Monroe and dances coquettishly while waiting for me to take my turn.
So, my twist on these “big ideas” is that the A.I.s would not just be commonplace but that they would be artistic expressions of personality. And while this hasn’t happened, I think, in my more optimistic moments that it just hasn’t happened yet. I think a future where A.I. tools are both mundane and a facet of personal expression is going to happen. When I’m feeling more pessimistic, I still think it’s going to happen, just that we’ll have a lot less say in the matter.
So what did I get wrong?
I extended the model. Inside my science-fiction world, where anything could be printed, anything made by human hand had an intrinsic value that added to its appeal. In other words, sure, you could put your custom A.I. inside a 3D printed housing, just like everyone else, but why do that when you could whittle or sculpt or otherwise create your housing with your own hands? Why sure, you could print out a plate and download the stock A.I. for your kitchen management needs, but this one was made by Jan Hammerstein in Sweden with his own hands. Isn’t it precious?
I spent most of last weekend at a professional conference where the mood regarding A.I. tools was split between the devout and the skeptical. On the one hand, these tools are going to make everything easier for us. On the other, they’re going to ruin everything. Sound familiar? I’m squarely on the fence.
But I hope my really, really big idea wasn’t wrong. In a world where the A.I. can write a five paragraph essay in less time than it takes me to write the words “five paragraph essay” I hope we’ll learn to attach and assign value to things made by humans. I don’t really care about reading Chat GPT’s essay; I do care about reading things written by my friends. And I hope that, in the midst of all the doom-and-gloom and confusion about A.I. tools, I hope we’ll keep sight of what it means for an actual, real human to put for their time and effort in an attempt to share and communicate their thoughts and experiences. Because that’s the real value in all of this technology and I promise you, I’m not wrong about that.
Yeah, okay, fine, it’s redolent of Star Wars but in my defense, I only saw the similarity after I was done writing. Besides, who doesn’t want their own personal R"2 unit?
Your final paragraph is really quite beautiful and I really hope this mentality prevails too. I’m a teacher and I find myself saying this to my students a lot these days - “I care what you have to say. I don’t care what ChatGPT has to say.” There’s a real human value in doing things ourselves.