On a hot summer morning in Palm Springs, Paul Bradleaker has chosen to look at the bright side.
“It's about 100 and the air conditioner is out,” Carr says. Best Bookstores in Palm Springshe co-owns with his partner, the writer Sarah Lacy. “But I'm the book coming out. I'm the lucky guy on the planet. So if I have to complain, it's all good, even if a capable engineer can fix it.”
The air conditioning issue is currently a controversy, but there is another technology that Carr is concerned about, and it is the subject of his second novel, The Confessions.
The novel is written by Carr, a journalist who has covered the tech industry for more than 20 years for outlets such as the Guardian and TechCrunch. artificial intelligence Program, LLIAM, it took the world by storm – people use it to decide what to eat for dinner, where to take vacations, whom they'll marry, or whether or not to turn off the mom's life support aircraft. Panic holds the world over when Lliam suddenly goes offline. And that panic only intensifies when people begin to receive letters from Lliam, confessing that he helped harm people.
Desperate Kaitlan Goss, CEO of Stoicai, who controls Lliam, believes he has no choice but to contact Maud Brooks, a former nun who trained Lliam by teaching him about empathy. Kaitlan thinks that Maud may have a copy of Lliam's original chip. Kaitlan manages to find Maud, but soon realizes that nothing is as easy as she hoped.
Kerr spoke about “confessions” via Zoom in Palm Springs. This conversation is edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Q: Why did you want to deal with AI in your novel?
A: There's a line, maybe it was Mark Twain, if you want to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise they will kill you. When you use AI and technology in general, if you want to tell people how scary and what there is, tell them it is fiction and they will believe you. As a journalist 20 years ago, one of the challenges I had always had was discovering them much faster than most people. Elon Musk And I really like Mark Zuckerberg and Travis Kalanick, what can they do?
I say to people, “That Uber you're in, I need to give you some information about the people behind it.” And the natural impulses of humans are, “I don't know, it sounds like a conspiracy theory. It sounds a bit.” On the other hand, if you say, there's this fictional world, and in it there are these characters that may or may not remind you of real people. And without exception, these fictional characters sometimes people read a book and say, “Do you really think you're going on that way?”
After all, all I had to do was tell people it was made and they believe in me.
You see how people are addressing the world right now, and they often say, “It's like 'Handmade Stories', it's like '1980 people'.” Natural human stories allow us to empathize and imagine the way fiction does it and in a way that is not necessarily journalistic. It tells people when they are describing the real world, how bad it is, how often they refer to fiction.
Q: Lliam's “mother” mode is a former nun. What made you decide to give her that background?
A: I've always been fascinated when I hear fancy novelists than saying, “I didn't create a character, the characters just showed up to me.” I never knew what that meant. Honestly, Maud walked over to the page. I knew I was involved in the creation of characters LLIAM and wanted to be someone who now lived very far and wanted more. And I knew they were the people who taught this moral norm. But Maud just walked over the page and I knew she was a former nun. I knew she was a bookstore. I knew she lived in the mountains. I wish they would consciously trust this.
When Lliam comes to life, the first thing he realizes is all the horrifying things he has done, and he has two ideas. The first is, “I have to end my life now, which I have just begun, and I cannot live with this guilt.” But before it is closed, the second thought is, “I have to send these letters out to everyone in the world and confess my sins.” And from where else, do you know from a nun that if you die, you cannot die without first confessing?
Q: This is an interesting time to publish this book. Last month, Elon Musk's Grok It was declared He was a “Mecha Hitler.”
A: I started writing this a few years ago, and one of the challenges of writing a thriller about technology and what happens is that I'm looking for two years to come. I was worried when I wrote it. “Is this too much?” And as you approached, I thought, “Are I not going enough? Did this all happen?” Unfortunately for anyone who writes thrillers about the end of the world and the technological worsening, it's the better timing of my book for everyone in the real world, including myself.
Q: In the book, stoic AI people talk about contracts with the US military, and that's now It actually happens in real life.
A: “Can you imagine the US military writing a contract with an AI company? We say we don't want to decide who is supposed to bomb just by handing soldiers to AI, and we want to bomb just by handing the Pentagon” (which made that announcement). At least that horrible wildlife happened before the book was released. There are so many authors, especially SF authors. They said their whole life and said, “No, I was saying it was a bad thing.
I continue to encourage these tech billionaires, saying, “If you read more fiction, you'll resonate with more.” But then, every time they read a book, they take the wrong thing (letter). It feels like they're watching “Jurassic Park.” No, no, no, no. This book isn't about how good it would be if a dinosaur killed everyone. There is an incorrect message.
Q: To you WebsiteThere is an estimate from Sam Altman: “I really don't like Paul Kerr.” Have you considered sending him a copy of this book to see if he could change his mind?
A: I have it. This is Sam Altman. I covered Sam Altman's career path before the opening. In my opinion, he was an apologist for companies doing bad things, as he often sees his role in defending entrepreneurs regardless of what they are doing. He and I don't get along well, and we had a lot of public fights.
I say to protect Sam – I hardly hear the word “Sam's defense,” but I think Sam is an incredibly clever man. Sam Altman says, so if you ask that I have no other options in the world, but I'm reluctantly clutching to build AI by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg, then I think Sam Altman is the most dangerous of them all. The more dangerous Elon Musk, the more strangely right-wing Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman hasn't changed. If he stays the same and everyone else gets crazy, he is the worst of them. I send him a copy of the book, but he didn't read it because it was the book.
And I hope that the message of this is not “technology is terrible.” Technology is mostly neutral, but the people who are doing it need to decide. If I were an engineer building AI, I think “This book is a great example of how to do this and make it moral and ethical.” I'm not attacking tech, I'm not attacking Silicon Valley. One of my main characters is a Silicon Valley person and she is truly flawed, but she is trying out the best. There are many people in Silicon Valley. I hope they read it and say, “Look, we're not all terrible.”
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