Orwell on AI
Orwell on AIThe author of 1984 predicted that literature would be written by machines. But he was wrong about why.Seva GunitskyJul 23, 202624105ShareThe Enigma of the Oracle, Giorgio de Chirico (1910)Prescience is a fickle gift. We credit it to wisdom, but just as often it’s a byproduct of luck or well-timed anxiety.
- ▪Orwell on AIThe author of 1984 predicted that literature would be written by machines.
- ▪But he was wrong about why.Seva GunitskyJul 23, 202624105ShareThe Enigma of the Oracle, Giorgio de Chirico (1910)Prescience is a fickle gift.
- ▪We credit it to wisdom, but just as often it’s a byproduct of luck or well-timed anxiety.
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Orwell on AIThe author of 1984 predicted that literature would be written by machines. But he was wrong about why.Seva GunitskyJul 23, 202624105ShareThe Enigma of the Oracle, Giorgio de Chirico (1910)Prescience is a fickle gift. We credit it to wisdom, but just as often it’s a byproduct of luck or well-timed anxiety. Sometimes the prediction is right, even remarkably so, but for the wrong reasons. So it is with Orwell’s 1946 essay “The Prevention of Literature”. The essay is usually remembered for its central claim that literature and totalitarianism cannot coexist. Good art is like a panda: it will not breed in captivity.But toward the end of the essay Orwell attempts something stranger. He tries to imagine what people will read in a future where literature was dying.
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