Dystopian versus Protopian Themes in Our Collective AI Future

Human Traits Book Update
The manuscript is finished! It's amazing what can get done when a deadline is applied. Now the book moves to the editing team over at JOA Publishing before it goes through a formatting treatment and then we are ready to print and publish! I am still targeting the middle of May for a publish date. I expect to be able to offer a pre-release version (and discount) for readers of this newsletter, so watch for that in the coming weeks!

Dystopian versus Protopian Themes in Our Collective AI Future
Do audiences crave a dystopian narrative or does Hollywood force the storytelling in that direction? Similar to the trope that 'sex sells', so too does a good dystopian thriller. It's like something is wired in our psyche to escape to a dark place where the absolute worst of us is mirrored in an alternate reality.

Most science fiction and action thriller stories cater towards a more dystopian perspective, where a story rooted with AI as the villain is almost an easy thing to write. A few recent examples come to mind:

* Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning - Where AI is cast as the mysterious villain and is effectively weaponized

* The Creator - Again, AI humanoids created with the mission to be used as a weapon against humanity

* Blade Runner - Replicants are created as AI humanoid robots closely resembling humans and more than not have nefarious objectives

There are many examples and really excellent storytelling. My problem as a macro perspective is that AI is almost always cast as a villain in our future and rarely are we shown examples where AI is used to help humanity flourish. It might start out with altruistic motives, but eventually moves to AI becoming power hungry, greedy and dangerous. Of course, it wouldn't be much of a story without a dramatic conflict, so I am not looking for rainbows and unicorns as the end-all, be-all story backdrop.

When I was in the story crafting stage of my novel, I was thinking about how I wanted to portray AI in our near horizon future. About a year ago, I watched this interview between Lex Friedman and Grimes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOwm7GUjcg8

Grimes mentions two things of note: Ian Banks novel, 'Surface Detail', and the concept of a protopian future and credits the work of Monika Bielskyte. If you want to skip this section of the podcast it's at 26:45.

This was the first time that I heard the term 'protopia' or 'protopian', and I wasn't able to get it out of my head. This then effectively became my North Star when writing Human Traits. Make no mistake, there is danger and drama filled with all sorts of negative outcomes with AI in my novel, but I would like to think that I imagine a more protopian world, one where AI can help humanity more than it hurts it. This is a harder story to write and still make sure there is plenty of intrigue and drama. I would like to think that I struck a fair balance in Human Traits and I can't wait to get it into readers' hands!