quintessential proto-AI story to me has always been Walter Miller Jr.’s “The Darfsteller”…a story that opens itself to any number of interpretations, but in our current moment I see it as most clearly about AI taking over the filmmaking system. as a human artist within a mechanistic process, is it even possible to still discover transcendence, and if so would you do it by fighting the machine or working with it? insanely, the story comes down on the side of the machine, but it is still eminently worth reading and I am shocked that it isn’t more widely known.
more recently I think Klara and the Sun is an interesting proto-AI text, though as somebody else said about Immortal King Rao maybe a little too close to LLM ascendancy for prophet status.
I got a collected stories for Walter Miller and started this story—you're right, it's crazy it's not better known! Also unrelated but I think you recommend Vince Staples in an old post and I have finally started listening to some of his stuff and am enjoying it.
i'm so glad you're enjoying it (and vince too haha, i heard his new album that dropped today and found a lot to admire!) i have never read Canticle or actually anything else by him but that story made such an impression on me, i should really dive deeper. i love stories about actors.
I find sci fi stories that end with a kind of repulsive conclusion interesting—I don't know if this one is exactly repulsive (I'm still thinking about it), but I completely feel this way about Michael Swanwick's "Ginnungagap" if you've read that.
i actually read it on your recommendation! really incredible story, and with swanwick's usual brilliance of imagery (that phoenix inside the black hole...)
his two novels i've read (Stations of the Tide and The Iron Dragon's Daughter) are both incredible and have stunning endings which yeah are both sort of "repulsive" in the same way as "Ginnungagap": they confront you with the logic of something not quite human. (which is also a way to describe the ending of "The Darfsteller"!)
You saying this made me realize I’ve never read any of his short fiction… I should fix this.
There was a computer generated novel in 1993 called Just This Once (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_This_Once). So probably 1993 would serve as a cut off here, even though the process was different from an LLM.
It’s kind of funny in the archives I’ve found stuff that’s like A COMPUTER WROTE A POEM OH NO that is probably at least listserv era if not earlier. You would think if we’d been worried about this since the early nineties we would have developed a game plan lol
The Singularity by Dino Buzzati is my pick for an AI-before-AI story. It’s about how you can’t separate intelligence from its embodiment, or from human passions (the bad “irrational” ones, too), and it’s pretty creepy but quite fun. Also Vauhini Vara’s Immortal King Rao is too close to the chatgpt moment for it to be proto-AI, but it’s great, too!
I am pretty sure I have the Buzzati NYRB editions somewhere but I haven’t read them! I actually hadn’t heard of Immortal King Rao and will add it to my to read.
I had to stop drinking tea but when I did, I loved Eco Cha’s Taiwanese oolong teas. Also, I don’t know how easily one can find them in the US, but the Taiwanese perfume company pSeven has three different Taiwanese tea-inspired fragrances that do NOT have milk notes. They even sell the sampler trio in a cute tea tin! My favorite of the three is the Formosa Beau-Tea one, but the Aged Tea is very, very weird and worth a sniff for novelty.
i finished his recent book Lake of Darkness this week, also very much a story responding to the AI moment! not quite up to the measure of The Thing Itself imo but very short and spooky and like Thing Itself, incredibly religious.
I bought The Thing Itself for a friend based on the premise before I read it and when I finished I thought I didn’t realize this book was so Christian I hope she doesn’t think I am being weird… then I looked Adam Roberts up and found out he is not religious at all lol
quintessential proto-AI story to me has always been Walter Miller Jr.’s “The Darfsteller”…a story that opens itself to any number of interpretations, but in our current moment I see it as most clearly about AI taking over the filmmaking system. as a human artist within a mechanistic process, is it even possible to still discover transcendence, and if so would you do it by fighting the machine or working with it? insanely, the story comes down on the side of the machine, but it is still eminently worth reading and I am shocked that it isn’t more widely known.
more recently I think Klara and the Sun is an interesting proto-AI text, though as somebody else said about Immortal King Rao maybe a little too close to LLM ascendancy for prophet status.
I got a collected stories for Walter Miller and started this story—you're right, it's crazy it's not better known! Also unrelated but I think you recommend Vince Staples in an old post and I have finally started listening to some of his stuff and am enjoying it.
i'm so glad you're enjoying it (and vince too haha, i heard his new album that dropped today and found a lot to admire!) i have never read Canticle or actually anything else by him but that story made such an impression on me, i should really dive deeper. i love stories about actors.
Canticle is so good! I really recommend it.
I find sci fi stories that end with a kind of repulsive conclusion interesting—I don't know if this one is exactly repulsive (I'm still thinking about it), but I completely feel this way about Michael Swanwick's "Ginnungagap" if you've read that.
i actually read it on your recommendation! really incredible story, and with swanwick's usual brilliance of imagery (that phoenix inside the black hole...)
his two novels i've read (Stations of the Tide and The Iron Dragon's Daughter) are both incredible and have stunning endings which yeah are both sort of "repulsive" in the same way as "Ginnungagap": they confront you with the logic of something not quite human. (which is also a way to describe the ending of "The Darfsteller"!)
You saying this made me realize I’ve never read any of his short fiction… I should fix this.
There was a computer generated novel in 1993 called Just This Once (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_This_Once). So probably 1993 would serve as a cut off here, even though the process was different from an LLM.
yeah you’re right…I’m too much of a Zoomer I always assume the 21st century is the be-all end-all of stuff happening.
It’s kind of funny in the archives I’ve found stuff that’s like A COMPUTER WROTE A POEM OH NO that is probably at least listserv era if not earlier. You would think if we’d been worried about this since the early nineties we would have developed a game plan lol
PARANOIA AGENT. I can't wait for your thoughts!
I’m so excited to watch it again… I haven’t seen it in forever.
“There Will Come Soft Rains” sorta. If I were teaching a class I’d throw in “Mon Oncle” even tho the house isn’t run on AI
Automated houses would also bring in Russ’s “Nor Custom Stale”
Bradbury has this poem at the start of the short story "Night Call, Collect" (1969):
"Suppose and then suppose and then suppose
That wires on the far-slung telephone black poles
Sopped up the billion-flooded words they heard
Each night all night and saved the sense
And meaning of it all.
Then, jigsaw in the night, Put all together and
In philosophic phase
Tried words like moron child.
Thus mindless beast
All treasuring of vowels and consonants
Saves up a miracle of bad advice
And lets it filter whisper, heartbeat out
One lisping murmur at a time.
So one night soon someone sits up
Hears sharp bell ring, lifts phone And hears a
Voice like Holy Ghost Gone far in nebulae
That Beast upon the wire,
Which with sibilance and savoring!
Down continental madnesses of time
Says Hell and O And then Hell-o.
To such Creation
Such dumb brute lost Electric Beast,
What is your wise reply?"
that’s fire…i honestly feel like if anybody had the most proto-AI stories it would have to be bradbury
We could put this as the intro to this fictional anthology! Maybe even get a title…
The Singularity by Dino Buzzati is my pick for an AI-before-AI story. It’s about how you can’t separate intelligence from its embodiment, or from human passions (the bad “irrational” ones, too), and it’s pretty creepy but quite fun. Also Vauhini Vara’s Immortal King Rao is too close to the chatgpt moment for it to be proto-AI, but it’s great, too!
I am pretty sure I have the Buzzati NYRB editions somewhere but I haven’t read them! I actually hadn’t heard of Immortal King Rao and will add it to my to read.
If nothing else, their covers are gorgeous!
I had to stop drinking tea but when I did, I loved Eco Cha’s Taiwanese oolong teas. Also, I don’t know how easily one can find them in the US, but the Taiwanese perfume company pSeven has three different Taiwanese tea-inspired fragrances that do NOT have milk notes. They even sell the sampler trio in a cute tea tin! My favorite of the three is the Formosa Beau-Tea one, but the Aged Tea is very, very weird and worth a sniff for novelty.
Eco Cha was where I got my tea! I got their cold brew set.
I will look into this perfume company too. Sometimes you can find things through decanters.
My essential AI story (novel -length) would have to be The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts!
i finished his recent book Lake of Darkness this week, also very much a story responding to the AI moment! not quite up to the measure of The Thing Itself imo but very short and spooky and like Thing Itself, incredibly religious.
I bought The Thing Itself for a friend based on the premise before I read it and when I finished I thought I didn’t realize this book was so Christian I hope she doesn’t think I am being weird… then I looked Adam Roberts up and found out he is not religious at all lol
it’s SO Christian it’s really funny…I thought about writing about it last year and might still, I am a pretty big Roberts fan
I love that book!