Lisa Joy among writers who see fear and promise of artificial intelligence as a spur for storytelling
(Bloomberg) — Lisa Joy, one of the creators of hit HBO series Westworld, says she’s confident her job as a producer of science fiction is safe from artificial intelligence. At least for a “long time.”
“Right now, AI can be used as a supplement to creative ideation, but it’s not yet creating new material,” she said on the latest episode of the Bloomberg Originals seriesAI IRL, which examines how AI features in — and can help shape — science fiction.
Joy is creating a TV adaptation for Amazon Studios of Fallout, the popular post-apocalyptic game series developed by Bethesda Game Studios. In the games, AI-powered humanoid robots (among many other forms) play key roles in shaping storylines, and not always ones that end well for living creatures.
She’s tight-lipped about the contents of the Fallout program, but asked if there were aspects of humanity ripe for exploring in a sci-fi context she pointed to jealousy.
“I think the most dangerous thing that an AI could ‘feel’ would be jealousy or desire — desire for something outside of its coded parameters,” Joy said. “The incantation that you give to the genie is missing a key phrase that would keep the genie in the bottle, and it allows a growth that we aren’t ready for, and the creation of a desire inside a machine that the world is not prepared to handle.”
Sci-fi author Cory Doctorow argued that the real world has great experience living alongside malevolent artificial organisms.
“They’re called limited liability companies,” he said. “They keep getting more powerful and the people who run them are clearly powerless to stop them. I think that the best way to understand all of the extremely rich people ringing their hands and rending their garments about the coming AI apocalypse is that it’s really just displaced anxiety about their relationship to the companies they run.”
Fellow author Tom Merritt is more optimistic about AI’s role in creating works of science fiction.
“I’m not so much worried about being replaced, partly because AI isn’t as good at creative things yet, but also we tend to take tools and we figure out new ways to use them, and come up with things we couldn’t do before,” he said. “What I look at as a writer is how can this help me tell a better story? And am I adaptable enough to use it and come up with something that I couldn’t have come up with otherwise?”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.