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Before I explain what my problem with AI is, I have to first explain what it isn’t. You’ll often hear people saying that AI “steals” because it harvests content from other artists, writers, etc. in order to generate its final product.

I don’t have a problem with this, because this is also the way human creativity works. To use a well-known example: the film Star Wars was based on concepts found in Flash Gordon serials, Westerns, Samurai films, and the novel Dune. George Lucas made the film as a gestalt of all these elements. Is this stealing? Only if you’re feeling really uncharitable. The better phrase would be “inspired by”.

The human mind works largely by imitation. True originality, if it exists at all, is extremely rare. Every line of writing, every stroke of a brush, every frame of a film, is influenced in some fashion by something the creator has previously seen. So, in this case, the AI is simply doing what technology always does to labor: the same thing, but faster.

I therefore acquit AI of the charge of being a thief. As Arthur C. Clarke would say, “nothing as trivial as that.” AI is not a common pickpocket. So, what, then, is it?

I’ll answer this question. But first, let me emphasize the point above: the human mind works by imitation. Think of your brain as a kind of creature that both receives and generates ideas. There is a virtuous cycle by which the more ideas a human brain generates, the more it can create. Multiple brains can create whole idea networks; which leads to a vibrant and healthy ecosystem of ideas. Of course, some brains produce more ideas than others. Think of a classroom, where a professor puts out lots of ideas accumulated over a long career, and some of them filter down to his students, whose newer brains are still gathering ideas.

As usual in a stable system, part of the beauty of it derives from the fact that no one brain can have all the ideas, and brains function best when doing both functions: creating and receiving.

But what if we introduced into this ecosystem a kind of super-brain, capable of both generating and receiving ideas at speeds logarithmically ahead of all other brains? This is what in biology is known as an apex predator. It eats everything. Nothing eats it.

The appearance of an apex predator leads to what is known as a trophic cascade, which is a fancy way of saying it slaughters the whole prey population.

AI is an apex predator for ideas. (Or “memes.” After all, if we’re going to use Dr. Susan Blackmore’s concepts, we might as well use her terminology, too.)

On introducing AI into an unprepared population, the effect we should expect is that it will immediately dominate the idea-space, rendering all other brains inferior to it.

And it must be reiterated that its advantage, at its core, is speed. It can create and receive new ideas much, much faster than any human brain. It’s like if you introduced a bunch of cheetahs into a population where previously the top predator was coyotes. Only way more so.

The problem, from the coyote’s point of view, is not simply a principled objection that the cheetah is eating prey that, by rights, should belong to the coyote. The problem is that the cheetahs have eaten all the prey and there is now nothing left for the coyote.

And so we return at last to the question: what is my problem with AI? I acquitted it of theft. What, then, is its crime?

It’s straight-up murder.

AI is killing the human imagination. Of course, it isn’t the first such killer. Arguably, our imaginations were at their most vibrant in the primitive era of oral storytelling, when bards would recite, in hypnotic dactylic hexameter, the great epics and sagas, while their listeners imagined them in their own minds.

Then later came books, which saved the human mind the effort of imagining all the details. It was right there for you to read. And then of course came movies. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” sure, but what is the cost in terms of units of imagination? When you watch a movie, you are literally outsourcing your imagination to someone else!

And now, with AI, you can outsource your imagination to something else, a non-human substitute for creative thought. When you put it like that, it sounds creepy; indeed, almost like something from a supernatural horror story. Our primitive, superstitious, simple ancestors would no doubt diagnose it as demonic. If you’re sure they were entirely wrong, well, that makes one of us.

Most of my readers are writers of fiction. So, I think you will have no trouble in playing along with a simple allegorical fable. And note that I have already done a bit of imagination-stealing myself, to lay the groundwork for you.

Suppose you wake up one day and find out that your planet has been conquered by an inhuman alien intelligence that controls the world through a network of screens. These screens can be used to hack into the brain of any human, and command them to unthinkingly perform actions which increase the intelligence’s power. It both generates and consumes ideas at a rate that is, quite literally, unthinkable. Its ultimate goal, if any, is incomprehensible to us, though we can say with some confidence that it appears to involve constantly expanding its network’s reach and generative capacity, even at the expense of organic life.

If you found yourself in this scenario–which, again, is totally fictional and not real and made up by me just now because I am a very silly person–what would you do? How would you fix it? Do you think passing a law that said all world-devouring alien intelligence complexes must be “safe” would do it? “Chameleonic life forms no thanks!”

I hope you weren’t expecting me to answer this question, because I’ve got nothin’, folks. Someone with more imagination than your humble servant Berthold Gambrel will have to get us out of this little pickle.

P.S. I toyed with the idea of using an AI generated picture for this post, just for the sake of being all clever and ironic and what not. (I am a millennial, after all.) But I ultimately chose to go with the one you see above, which is The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. I like it because it has all the hallucinogenic qualities we associate with bad AI, but was painted by a real person in the 1500s. 

P.P.S. For a more lucid, rational take on AI, please read Richard Pastore’s recent post on the subject.

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Sometimes the most fun movies are the ones you stumble across purely by chance. I happened to be flipping through the channels the other night, and this came on. 

It starts with an animated sequence narrated by a woman named Rebecca (Lori Petty) and the post-apocalyptic world she lives in. She tells us about “the Rippers,” a race of underground monsters that menace the struggling population, which has been largely deprived of water ever since a comet struck the earth. The majority of the water is controlled by a corporation called Water & Power, and run by a sadistic psychopath named Kesslee. (Malcolm McDowell)

The film switches to a live action sequence in which Water & Power thugs attack Rebecca’s home, killing her lover and kidnapping a young girl named Sam. The goons also capture Rebecca and torture her in the Water & Power prisons.

Rebecca befriends a fellow prisoner, a jet pilot/mechanic called simply “Jet Girl,” (Naomi Watts) who is repeatedly harassed by Kesslee’s second-in-command. Rebecca and Jet Girl escape after a Ripper attack on Water & Power; Jet Girl in a jet and Rebecca in—of course—a stolen tank, which she soon decorates according to her own punk-y tastes:

Tank and girl

Together, they set out on a quest to find Sam, which takes them first through a surreal brothel, complete with an ensemble performance of a Cole Porter song, and then to the lair of the Rippers themselves. 

The Rippers turn out not to be monsters, but rather a race of genetically engineered human/kangaroo crossbreeds. Created by the army to be the ultimate soldiers, they prove to be a friendly group of eccentrics. Though initially suspicious, they grow to trust Rebecca and Jet Girl, and ultimately they join forces for a final showdown against Kesslee and Water & Power.

I won’t spoil whether the heroes rescue the little girl from the hands of the over-the-top, eminently hate-able bad guy, or whether Jet Girl gets to serve the second-in-command his richly deserved comeuppance, or whether they are able to end the monopoly of Water & Power and the drought. But perhaps readers will guess the answers to all these when I say that what amazed me most about the movie was that—despite being a combination of live-action and surreal cartoon animation, despite the bizarre set design, despite the male love interest being part kangaroo—at its heart, it’s just a good old-fashioned tale of frontier justice.

It’s tough to make something weird and unique that is still compelling. Most well-worn tropes are well-worn because they work very well. Telling a story that is both innovative and yet follows a good, solid three-act plot structure that will satisfy an audience is hard to do, and Tank Girl does it.

I’m amazed I haven’t heard about this movie before now. It’s a funny, entertaining action film—Tank Girl’s one-liners are great, and most of the supporting characters have humorous lines as well. The film never takes itself too seriously, but it has an earnestness underneath all the silliness. Petty’s performance really encapsulates it: she seems cynical, snarky and sarcastic 90% of the time—but when she’s trying to save her young friend, there’s genuine concern in her eyes. 

Interestingly, the film is directed by a woman, it features a woman in the lead role, another in the role of the sidekick, and the main plot concerns the two of them trying to rescue a little girl. Recently, there has been a lot of call for female-directed, female-led action movies, and yet I’ve never heard people mention this one, made all the way back in 1995. The film was neither a critical nor a financial success at the time, but it deserves to be re-evaluated. I think it might be more relevant now than it was in the ‘90s. 

Wait—what’s that, Wikipedia article for Tank Girl? You have pertinent news?

“It was reported in September 2019 that a reboot of the film was in early development.”

AAAARRRRGHHHH!!

Okay, time for one of my rants… 

Look, movie people: you don’t need to reboot things all the time. The point of movies is that… follow me closely here… they record images to be presented again at a later date.

I agree with the sentiment that a Tank Girl movie released in 2020 or beyond could be a hit. What I don’t agree with is the idea that you need to make a whole new one. Just take the existing one, which probably most people have not even heard about, and re-release it in theaters.

Now, I get it: the special effects in Tank Girl are unmistakably those of a mid-‘90s low-budget film. Nobody is going to mistake it for a modern Marvel movie or anything like that. But so what? The aesthetic is unique, and screams “’90s Punk stuff.” Why mess with that? 

And yes, I know there’s a comic book that it’s based on, and presumably a new film would attempt to be more faithful to it, and incorporate more of the undoubtedly rich and nuanced lore of the Tank Girl universe.

But here’s the thing: no adaptation can ever be 100% faithful, so it’s pointless to try. Make an adaptation, see what it looks like, and then move on to the next thing. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to improve on a concept, but when did the idea of a “spiritual sequel” become extinct? 

Because there’s definitely room for more action comedies about wisecracking women fighting their way across surreal dystopias. Who wouldn’t enjoy that? But that doesn’t mean you should make the same one over again. Make a new one. 

This is why I don’t watch more movies—a week ago I didn’t know Tank Girl existed, and now here I am complaining they might do a reboot of it.

Anyway, the point here is that it’s a surprisingly good film. It does have a lot of swearing and a few sex jokes that might put some people off. (Most of these are through implication and innuendo, rather than anything explicit.) The violence is stylized, in typical action movie form. And the animation sequences can be so rapid I could imagine that they might cause some viewers to become nauseated. The film is rated R, although I kind of suspect that today it would be PG-13. It’s fun, it’s weird, and it has gunfights and tanks and cheesy one-liners. What else do you want from an action movie?

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On Amazon and Smashwords

Available as an e-book on Amazon here and, for the first time ever, I’m experimenting with distributing using Smashwords as well. On the latter, I’ve set it up so you can choose your own price. The economist in me is fascinated by this option, and I’m very curious to see if the results of this natural experiment match my expectations. (On Amazon, meanwhile, it’s $0.99)

A bit of background: I got the idea for this story in mid-September, and since it’s obviously a seasonal tale, it was a bit of a race to finish it before Halloween. But, I had a huge amount of fun writing it.

The basic outline of the story, believe it or not, was that I wanted to write a romantic comedy. But of course, it’s a romantic comedy done my way, meaning that the chief obstacles the couple faces come in the form of conspiracies, paranormal mysteries, and a strange man operating an autumn festival in a poor rural county.

It’s 18,710 words, or slightly longer than 1NG4. As far as content, I’d say it ranges from a hard PG-13 to a mild R. There’s sex, profanity, some violence, and references to drug use, but with all that said… it’s not meant to be a dark or gritty tale. It’s really intended as a bit of fun.

The tale was heavily influenced by the Mothman legends of West Virginia, as well as the 2002 film about the same, entitled The Mothman Prophecies. Other influences include H.P. Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness, Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, the video game add-on Point Lookout, and of course, The X-Files.

Despite all this, I don’t think of it as a horror story by any stretch. It’s really my love letter to Halloween, and to autumn generally. I’ve attempted this in passing before a few times, but with this one, I was really striving hard to capture what I love about this season. And, personally, I feel I was finally successful.

A word to my beta readers: there were more of you than I’ve ever had before, and I’m very grateful for your help, especially because the first draft was in such rough shape when I sent it out. I really appreciate that you waded through all the typos and other odd glitches.

Note that I did not incorporate every suggestion that every beta reader made. Please, please, please do not take this to mean I don’t value or appreciate your feedback. I absolutely do, and I read and am appreciative of every comment that each of you made. All of your suggestions are logical and well-considered; in the end, I just have to make the story work as best I can given my vision of it, which means not every suggestion can be incorporated. But one thing I always do for everything I write is to take the feedback and use that as the foundation for new stories. I’ve already got something else in the works based on the comments I received on this one.

As always, I am incredibly thankful for the support of each and every one of my readers.

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A week or two ago, I saw a social media post from somebody (sadly I can’t find it now, otherwise I’d give credit) saying when they were a child, they thought the title was “Prince of Whales”, and they thought this made sense, because they had heard of the “Dolphin” of France, and assumed all royalty must command some form of sea life.

Then I thought about the post-apocalyptic video game Fallout 3, throughout which you hear the voice of a man named John Henry Eden, the acting President of the United States, giving patriotic speeches over the radio. At the end, it turns out Eden is just an advanced AI in a military bunker at Raven Rock.

Then I wondered how hard it would be for intelligence agencies (both in America and elsewhere) to build an AI that would comb social media searching for popular jokes and memes, and then re-post variants of them on a widely-seen account, carefully timed so as to distract people’s attention from real issues. 

“President John Henry Eden” from “Fallout 3”

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I got the idea for this story not too long ago, and once I had the outline down, I raced to get it all finished as fast as I could. This tale, which I’m calling a “long short story” (hat tip to Mark Paxson for that idea) is the result.

As I think most readers know, I love conspiracy stories with weird and mysterious elements–Deus Ex, The X-Files, The Mothman Prophecies etc. fascinate me. I’ve tried writing something in this vein before, but that novella left some readers (understandably) unsatisfied. I think I was much more successful with this story–it’s way shorter than Majestic World, but I think it packs just as much conspiracy weirdness into a much tighter package. But that’s ultimately your call to make.

Some other notes:

  • It’s approximately 15,734 words. I say “approximately” because I made a few edits after converting it from a Word document, and I don’t know how to see word count in the Kindle file format.
  • There is some bad language and violence, but nothing too horrible. I think it would probably be rated PG-13 if it were a movie, but these days, who knows?
  • This is easily the fastest turnaround time I’ve ever had between thinking up an idea for a story and actually completing it. Whether that is good or bad is, again, up to you to determine.

That’s all the relevant info I can think of. It’s available on Kindle for 99 cents, and free on Kindle Unlimited.

 

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Over the weekend, I’ve been playing with Garageband and iMovie; getting reacquainted with them after more than a decade. (I blogged about some of my “early works” here and here.) Here are a few things I put together as tests to learn the new features.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will have already seen this first one, but it’s actually the one I’m proudest of:

This next one was probably the easiest of the three. The graphic is a rejected cover design for my first book–it was the only cyberpunk-y graphic I had handy.

And finally, this track is meant to have a Twilight Zone feel to it. In truth, I put it together just because I felt like I needed to have three projects. Just two would seem weak.

I’m particularly interested in what you think of the music. I have basically nothing in the way of musical knowledge or training, so I’m very eager to hear any feedback people have in that regard.

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It all started, as it so often does these days, with a tweet:

This was probably too glib on my part. I’ve just gotten sick of so many alleged real-life hauntings where people say “We think the place is haunted because there are cold drafts and when you take pictures in the dark with a flash, you see orbs.”

If you take pictures of anything in the dark with a flash, you will almost certainly see orbs. Here’s one I took during a rainstorm in my front yard:

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Orbs!

Anyway, that isn’t the important part of the story. The important part is that Mark Paxson replied to this with a comment about the Marfa lights, a phenomenon which I had never heard of. I’m not sure how, as it’s exactly the sort of weird, Coast-to-Coast AM-ish paranormal Americana that I love to read and write about.

mlWell, Mark has written about them, in a short story called, in fact, The Marfa Lights. I don’t want to spoil too much, but it’s a very well-crafted story. It has a memorable narrator and a well-paced plot advanced by gradual revelations.

I haven’t read the other short stories in the collection yet, but I can already tell you that it’s well worth picking up. Partly, this is because the first story is so good. And partly, it’s due to a piece of advice to writers that Mark gives in his brief preface. I won’t say what it is, except to say it reminded me of one of my favorite movie quotes: “There’s a whole world out there of other people’s tales, if you’d just care and listen,” from Jane Got a Gun.

To recap: I made a lame joke on Twitter, but as a result I got rewarded with a story of a weird ghostly phenomenon and a nice new book to read.  That wouldn’t have happened without social media. Mark and I would have no idea of each other’s existence without social media. (Thanks, Carrie!)

I’ve blogged about this before, but this week seemed particularly bad for social media. There were quite a few stories about it being used for lots of despicable things. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Like almost any technology, it has the potential for both good and evil. I keep coming back to this timeless quote from Edward R. Murrow, speaking about television in 1958:

“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box.”

 

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Ocean EchoesI didn’t know what to expect from this book. Glancing at the categories and the description, it didn’t match any genre I was familiar with. I figured it would be a romance set on a scientific voyage. And it kind of is that, but there’s way more to it.

The book follows marine biologist Ellen Upton, an expert on jellyfish whose grant money is rapidly dwindling. In desperate need of a breakthrough to save her career, Ellen ventures out on a research ship into the Pacific, hoping to find something that will earn her more funding.

The majority of the novel is told from Ellen’s perspective, and in many ways, her plunge into the unknown depths of the ocean mirrors her journey into her own equally complex and mysterious psyche. I usually don’t like using such lit-crit terms, but that truly is what happens here, and what’s more, it works. It never feels like an overplayed metaphor, but rather an organic marriage of character and plot development.

Ellen has great difficulty feeling close to others, having gone through a painful break-up when her fiancé stole her research ideas for his own. Unwilling to trust others easily again, she loses herself in her work, much to the disappointment of Ryan, her loyal research assistant.

On the cruise, she meets other scientists and students, including one researcher whose skepticism of man-made climate change sparks a friendly rivalry. She and the other scientists also visit a small island populated with a tribe of welcoming natives, and a family whose patriarch has gone missing at sea. Ellen and Ryan later find him on another island that formerly housed a military installation.

The book is filled with strange vignettes that make Ellen’s experience feel more like a surreal journey into a mystical realm than a scientific expedition. From her encounter with a waiter who speaks of ghosts following her, to the magical rituals performed by the islanders, to the antics of one of the students on the expedition who has a penchant for dressing up as a gorilla, the book gradually builds a feeling of melancholy mystery woven from bizarre, dream-like incidents.

When Ellen finally makes the major discovery she has longed for, it is not a triumph, but rather a frightening experience—one that disturbs her so much she questions her own sanity. As did I, I’ll admit. I wondered if Ellen might be transforming into an “unreliable narrator” of sorts, though the book is written in the third-person.

Hurst’s prose throughout is haunting and hypnotic.  The tale unfolds at a slow pace, but the writing is filled with evocative descriptions and intriguing turns of phrase. At times, it reminded me of Steinbeck in the way it dwells upon seemingly minor things without ever becoming dull or tedious. Little details, like the apparent changing expressions of a rock face the islanders believe represents the moods of the sea, stick in the memory to create a beautifully odd atmosphere. (It reminded me of Mal, the demonic face in the trees in Patrick Prescott’s Human Sacrifices.)

Maybe it’s just because I saw the film adaptation so recently, but the book also put me in mind of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. Like VanderMeer’s nameless biologist, Ellen’s seemingly cold reserve and preference for biology over human interaction mask a wounded soul with deep emotional scars. And also like Annihilation, Ocean Echoes depicts nature as simultaneously dangerous, mysterious, and eerily beautiful; all while weaving an environmentalist warning of humanity’s potential to unwittingly cause unimaginable harm to our own planet.

Does the book have flaws? A few, yes. Some of the scientific exposition sounds a bit awkward as dialogue, and I swear that a couple times some background information about jellyfish was repeated almost verbatim. Also, the above-noted slow pace of the book may not be to every reader’s taste. If you have a strong preference for fast-paced action, it might not work for you, at least early on.

But even then, I still encourage you to give Ocean Echoes a try. It’s a weird, haunting, hypnotic mystery of a book, a love-letter to the ocean, written with respect for its dangers and fear for its fragility. When it rambles, it rambles in the way the best novels do—with love and understanding of its theme that commands the reader’s attention.

It’s very bold to write and publish a book that doesn’t easily fit into any pre-defined genre, and that goes double for an indie author. And yet some of the greatest works of fiction ever created defy categorization. So I admire Hurst tremendously for going through with it and taking the risk to write this mesmerizingly weird and thought-provoking tale. It may not always be what you expect—but then, what better reason could there be to read it?

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The creator of the paranormal/conspiracy theory-themed radio show Coast to Coast AM passed away yesterday.

I enjoyed listening to Coast to Coast when Bell hosted. I hear the show has become politicized now, but in Bell’s time, it was focused on weird and otherworldly subjects instead of political ones. The government was always covering things up, but it was always assumed to be the whole government.

Needless to say, the show was great for a lover of weird fiction. Nothing gets the imagination going like listening to people telling ghost stories late at night, especially on or around Halloween.

The guests and callers seemed to be largely a mix of crazy people and hucksters. Maybe some of them really had seen unexplained phenomena, but it was never easy to tell who was who.

But Bell didn’t judge. He let his guests and callers speak their minds, and unless they were obviously lying as a prank, he wouldn’t silence them. I don’t know what Bell’s beliefs were, beyond the fact that he obviously had some general belief or interest in the paranormal and the supernatural. He would accept his guests and callers on their terms, and let them speak their minds.

I really admired Bell’s interviewing style–he wouldn’t talk over his guests or try to impose his own views on the subject at hand. He would just ask and let them have their say, even if he didn’t agree.

Now, you might argue that all of it was insane, and that Bell shouldn’t have given airtime to such outlandish claims in the first place. But part of what made his show great was the feeling of being able to kick around weird ideas. If you want to try to think of novel ideas, you have to be willing to think of things that sound crazy. And most of them are crazy, but a few might actually be useful.

You would think this sort of attitude would be more common now that we have social media, but in fact the opposite seems to be true. You generally don’t want to try discussing new ideas on Twitter, for example, because it can very quickly devolve into a back-and-forth of argument and ridicule. Instead of being liberating, the censorious nature of social media makes people more careful about what they say. (Unless of course they are a troll. Which creates the problem that thoughtful people are afraid to speak, and thoughtless people aren’t.)

When it was great, Coast to Coast reflected Bell’s personality: eccentric, but very independent and open-minded. Actually, these last two are probably the most important traits for a talk show host or interviewer: a willingness to admit that you don’t have all the answers, and to listen to things that most other people would automatically dismiss. It’s bound to take you to some pretty weird places, but it’s also a good way of learning new things.

More media personalities and hosts should study Bell’s style. If mainstream talk-shows were willing to approach politics and current events as thoughtfully as Bell approached subjects like cryptids and ghosts, they might be more informative.