Science Fiction Tried to Warn Us about AI. Or Did It?, by Tom Gammarino Essay [email protected] Wed, 03/01/2023 - 03:46 Photo by NASA / Unsplash “All our AI Frankenstein stories,” the author writes, “warn us that AI will destroy us, but far louder than that, they promise that the future is going to be mind-blowing and epic.” Will we heed the warnings? Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the literary work that most clearly established the conventions of science fiction as we know it. Not only did the 1818 novel pioneer the archetype of the mad scientist, it also established one of the genre’s most important cultural roles: to warn us about ways humans, through our hubris, might create the very beings that eventually undo us. In subtitling the novel The Modern Prometheus, Shelley harked back to the Titan who stole fire from the gods and was punished by having his regenerating liver devoured every day by an eagle (since the liver was the seat of the emotions for the Greeks, we might as well translate it as “heart”). Inspired by the experiments of Luigi Galvani, who used electric current to stimulate the leg of a dissected frog, and his nephew Giovanni Aldini, who ran a similar experiment on a hanged criminal, Shelley had her mad scientist play God by endowing a patchwork of human remains with the spark of life. Two centuries later, the resulting monstrosity serves as a stand-in for any of our runaway technologies — the internal... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2023-03-01 09:46:57 UTC ]
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Tom Rosenthal, former managing director of Secker and Warburg, has died at the age of 78.... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Plus Samsung gets overly heavy, Secret Plumber's social error, reasons to use Microsoft Word, and moreA burst of 10 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology teamAmicus Brief >> Bob KohnLike all others, Kohn was required to limit his amicus curiae legal brief on what he... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2013-12-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Randy Schekman says his lab will no longer send papers to Nature, Cell and Science as they distort scientific processLeading academic journals are distorting the scientific process and represent a "tyranny" that must be broken, according to a Nobel prize winner who has declared a boycott on the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2013-12-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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More job cuts could soon hit Time Inc., company executives told their top 300 managers at a quarterly meeting on Monday.The warning came during a question-and-answer session with Norm Pearlstine, Time Inc.'s newly appointed chief content officer. Asked by Time magazine Managing Editor Nancy... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2013-12-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Indie publishing via online writing communities and ebooks can provide valuable feedback, and even set you on the path to mainstream successNews that a quarter of the top 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com are from indie publishers doesn't surprise me. I started out writing online. Fed up with the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2013-12-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Simon & Schuster has launched a new social media community, The Hot Bed, to promote the "New Adult" genre complete with a "chili chart" to gauge hotness. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-12-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Attorney general Dominic Grieve hopes to prevent legal novices publishing remarks that might cause trials to be abandonedThe attorney general is to begin issuing legal warnings to steer Twitter users away from prejudicial comments that might force trials to be abandoned.Advisory notices –... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2013-12-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A battle for the hearts, minds and pockets of small and medium-sized newspaper publishers is being fought over the new system of press regulation.The large publishing companies who created the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) are urging smaller publishers to sign up to their... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2013-11-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Usborne has won the Royal Society Young People’s Book Award with an interactive flap book... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-11-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The 32nd Sharjah International Book Fair was launched yesterday, November 6, by HH Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, who decried the "cultural aggression" of globalization. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-11-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Author Lucy Hughes-Hallett has won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction for The Pike, her biography of philandering Italian poet and politician Gabriele D'Annunzio. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2013-11-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Scholastic is featuring its first ever TV ads for Liz Pichon's Tom Gates series next week,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-10-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Thomas A. Silvestri, president and publisher of the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, was elected president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association Sunday afternoon. In addition to Solomon, the following officers were elected: Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2013-10-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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You can't necessarily judge a book by its cover, but you can tell a lot about the content from it. For instance, when a certain font is paired with an illustrated character portrait featuring a dangling cigarette and/or a dangerous dame, clearly you are holding a pulpy detective novel from the... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2013-10-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A new study finds that reading literary fiction “leads people to perform better on tests that measure empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence." Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-10-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Penguin has paid tribute to thriller giant Tom Clancy, who has died at the age of 66. Tom Clancy... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-10-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books has more than doubled its prize fund this year.... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-09-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Orion has signed a trilogy of novels from historian Kate Williams. Jon Wood, deputy group... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-09-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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So what about that National Book Awards fiction longlist? It's a good one, and the last of the four longlists to be released by the National Book Foundation this week.So what about that National Book Awards fiction longlist? It’s a good one, and the last of the four longlists to be released by... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-09-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sage has launched a transatlantic campaign with other social science bodies to raise awareness of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-09-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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