Science-fiction meets body-horror meets\u2026 comedy? Paul Tremblay\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s twelfth novel, including the harms (and benefits!) of AI, his lawsuit against OpenAI, the machines taking over, morally murky characters, and more.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
Paul Tremblay: Oh, that\u2019s a great question, and one I have not been asked in that way yet. I think it\u2019s definitely the corporations or how they intend to use it. In my work, my brain works in worst case scenarios. I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll see what happened in my book, certainly. And I don\u2019t imagine it\u2019ll 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\u2019m more concerned about that, the whole idea that, AI, certainly how it\u2019s being used by these corporations to make money and concentrate it to them in the corporations is my big fear.<\/p>\n
CT: Something I\u2019ve found interesting in my research, using \u2018AI\u2019 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?<\/p>\n
PT: Yeah, I\u2019m sure as you discovered, and I\u2019ve had to say in interviews, one of the insidious things that corporations are doing is they use the blanket term \u2018AI\u2019. What you\u2019re working with is different than the large language models, which is, the thing that I have, the largest issue with, the thing that\u2019s going to be used to replace people in the workforce, the thing that\u2019s stealing my books and others\u2019 books.<\/p>\n
PT: Certainly, there are ways where these programs obviously can benefit people medically, but again, it goes back to my fears of who\u2019s controlling it, who\u2019s 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\u2019s sticky.<\/p>\n
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 \u2018intellectual exercise\u2019 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?<\/p>\n
PT: I mean, it already is. I\u2019ve seen it both on the writers\u2019 side, but also on the education side. So, on the writer\u2019s side, I\u2019m 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\u2019re not artists, they\u2019re scabs.<\/p>\n
PT: I\u2019m purposefully referring to the language of American unions. I don\u2019t care if you happen to be a former, Nobel prize-winning author, like that Polish author who had admitted lately that they\u2019re dabbling in it. It\u2019s like you\u2019re choosing the way of the scab now.<\/p>\n
PT: On the educational side of things, I\u2019ve just seen it. It\u2019s made education here in the US a total shit show. Now, as a math teacher, I\u2019ve had to deal with it a little bit less, but I definitely had to. I\u2019m 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\u2019t 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\u2019ve read is not promising for what it does to cognition and to our intelligence.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t agree with to make ends meet. Could you talk about your process in designing and developing Julia\u2019s character?<\/p>\n
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\u2019s becoming a problem. There continue to be articles daily about how much Americans are struggling with the rise of oil prices, rent, etc.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t necessarily want people rooting for my characters. I want them to hopefully understand them and think, \u2018If not for a few other things that happen in my life, maybe I would be doing the same things that they\u2019re doing\u2019. Even if you don\u2019t agree with what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s terms and conditions section that you\u2019ve only skim read?<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
PT: No, but definitely one of my worries was, \u2018I have to finish this book and have it published before it could happen\u2019. Even though I hope that I chose something that wouldn\u2019t be very realistic.<\/p>\n