Science-fiction meets body-horror meets… comedy? Paul Tremblay’s recent novel Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep is a horrifying read about the all-too-real fears over corporate greed and the weaponisation of AI. The story follows Julia, a twenty-something year old twitch gamer taking a temporary job to remotely control a (mostly) dead man with proprietary AI brain implants.
I have had the pleasure of interviewing Tremblay, the Bram Stoker Award winning, New York Times best selling author. We discussed the broader impacts and inspiration of Tremblay’s twelfth novel, including the harms (and benefits!) of AI, his lawsuit against OpenAI, the machines taking over, morally murky characters, and more.
Cleo Turner: I have recently finished reading your novel Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep and found it beautifully unsettling. Horror stories about artificial intelligence have been with us for decades, but it is only more recently that we are seeing an intersection between this dystopia and reality. Do you think we have more to fear from the technology itself, or the corporate greed which may use it to exploit people?
Paul Tremblay: Oh, that’s a great question, and one I have not been asked in that way yet. I think it’s definitely the corporations or how they intend to use it. In my work, my brain works in worst case scenarios. I don’t think we’ll see what happened in my book, certainly. And I don’t imagine it’ll be a Terminator scenario. What I think is more frightening to me is what it could do to our economies and our governments, right? I’m more concerned about that, the whole idea that, AI, certainly how it’s being used by these corporations to make money and concentrate it to them in the corporations is my big fear.
CT: Something I’ve found interesting in my research, using ‘AI’ to predict genomic data, is that the same technologies capable of accelerating scientific discoveries can also be misused. What role do you think fiction has in helping people grapple with technologies which are both exciting and concerning?
PT: Yeah, I’m sure as you discovered, and I’ve had to say in interviews, one of the insidious things that corporations are doing is they use the blanket term ‘AI’. What you’re working with is different than the large language models, which is, the thing that I have, the largest issue with, the thing that’s going to be used to replace people in the workforce, the thing that’s stealing my books and others’ books.
PT: Certainly, there are ways where these programs obviously can benefit people medically, but again, it goes back to my fears of who’s controlling it, who’s using it, because it really is a political tool as well. For instance, in the US, some hospitals are using a form of AI to sift through data, to try to come up with diagnoses, which is great. But you can already see the corporatized version of it with health insurance in my country. So yeah, it’s sticky.
CT: Speaking to large language models stealing your work, I really enjoyed the interludes and how they actually serve the narrative, which you revealed in the ‘intellectual exercise’ in chapter 16. The proposal of introducing chaos into your own work to obscure the training of large language models was really intriguing. Would you be able to share your views on how generative AI may impact the value of original human works?
PT: I mean, it already is. I’ve seen it both on the writers’ side, but also on the education side. So, on the writer’s side, I’m taking a very hard stance. If anyone claims to be a musician, a visual artist, or a writer, or filmmaker, and is using generative large language models then they’re not artists, they’re scabs.
PT: I’m purposefully referring to the language of American unions. I don’t care if you happen to be a former, Nobel prize-winning author, like that Polish author who had admitted lately that they’re dabbling in it. It’s like you’re choosing the way of the scab now.
PT: On the educational side of things, I’ve just seen it. It’s made education here in the US a total shit show. Now, as a math teacher, I’ve had to deal with it a little bit less, but I definitely had to. I’m leaving teaching now, partly because the books have done well enough and my kids are almost out of college, but also partly because, I really don’t want to deal with people jamming AI into our classrooms. Granted, I live in my own sort of curated algorithmic bubble, but every study that I’ve read is not promising for what it does to cognition and to our intelligence.
CT: I feel that part of what makes this novel and several of your other works so frightening, is that your characters are not black and white. Julia found herself complicit in exploitation, and many readers may resonate with this, say working for a company they don’t agree with to make ends meet. Could you talk about your process in designing and developing Julia’s character?
PT: For sure, her economic situation is a big factor in why she would even consider accepting the job. In the United States increasingly, that’s becoming a problem. There continue to be articles daily about how much Americans are struggling with the rise of oil prices, rent, etc.
PT: I tend to try to always create characters, and I thank you for saying that, that are sort of muddy and murky. I don’t necessarily want people rooting for my characters. I want them to hopefully understand them and think, ‘If not for a few other things that happen in my life, maybe I would be doing the same things that they’re doing’. Even if you don’t agree with what they’re doing.
CT: I have also heard you mention elsewhere that Bernie looks very similar to yourself. Is this based on an underlying fear that you might have signed your life away in a corporation’s terms and conditions section that you’ve only skim read?
PT: I think subconsciously, probably. Certainly, I think this book reflects my two years on the suing OpenAI case. In that case, there were so many documents to sign, but I also had to answer questions.I think everybody has that innate fear of like, what the hell am I signing?
CT: Your pandemic novel Survivor Song was almost prophetically written prior to and released during an actual global pandemic. As you were writing Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep, were there any developments in AI, or news stories which left you with a similar prophetic feeling?
PT: No, but definitely one of my worries was, ‘I have to finish this book and have it published before it could happen’. Even though I hope that I chose something that wouldn’t be very realistic.
PT: I think it was earlier in June, there was an article, and I forget where I read it, but this place basically has brains and jars, like the show Futurama. I think they were testing the effects of drug addiction on the brain. One of the spokespersons said something to the effect of, ‘Oh, you know, we’ve almost taken out all the wiring necessary for consciousness’. But they used the word ‘almost’, which is super chilling. So yeah, I don’t know if it’ll ever be exactly like what my book is, but yeah, certainly there was the concern of like, ‘oh man, I got to get this done first’.
CT: I am very excited for the film adaptation of A Head Full of Ghosts. Over a decade has passed since you wrote this, how have those characters stuck with you over the years?
PT: Those characters definitely have stuck with me, to the point where, I would never write a novel sequel to that book, but I’ve definitely gone back and written short stories involving the sisters. Partly because the sisters’ relationship within the novel is that they tell stories to each other. So I’m like, ‘Oh, Mary and Marjorie will have these other stories that they told each other’. That book is super important to me because it really sort of made my career.
CT: I’ll be looking away in many scenes, but I’m excited for it.
PT: Yeah, if they let the directors do what they want to do, I think it’s going to be a pretty disturbing movie.
Though Tremblay artfully outlines the threat to humanity which ‘AI’ may pose in the wrong hands, I cannot help but be left with hope at the end of our interview. As Tremblay has remarked, art made by humans is ‘worth fighting for’, and ‘makes us feel less alone’. It is not the time to be afraid of a technology which will undoubtedly support us in many ways. Rather, it is time to keep celebrating and creating art, as we have for millennia.
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