Share
& Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
The Gradient Podcast
Ken Liu: What Science Fiction Can Teach Us
Feb 23, 2023
0
02:02:40
Highlights
AI Chapters
Episode notes
1.
Introduction
2min
2.
How Did You Get to Write Science Fiction?
4min
3.
The Art of Story Writing
6min
4.
Is Sci-Fi Really Good at Predicting the Future?
4min
5.
Is There a Failure of Communication?
6min
6.
What Is the Message of the Dragon?
3min
7.
Is There a Commitment to Science Fiction?
5min
8.
The Narrative Fallacy Is So Important
2min
9.
Is There a Narrative Core to Artificial Intelligence?
4min
10.
The Dandelion Dynasty
5min
11.
The Silk Punk Aspect of American Style Modernity
6min
12.
The Impacts of Technology and How We Should Approach Them
4min
13.
Fostering Individualism
2min
14.
The Engineer and the Dandelion Dynasty
4min
15.
The Art of Tinkering
2min
16.
The Technology Language Isn't Just About Building Things
5min
17.
Changing the Language of Technology
3min
18.
How Do Machines Replace Human Creativity?
4min
19.
Language Models Are Designed to Engage in Chat-Based Interfaces
3min
20.
Is AI Really a Revolutionary Tool?
4min
21.
The Hidden Girl and the Paper Menagerie
3min
22.
Writing a Novel Um Sure Fiction for Me Is Um Sure
4min
23.
The Perfect Match in the Paper Menagerie
4min
24.
Machine Translation Is a Work of Art
6min
25.
Is There a Better Way to Make Better Recommendations?
2min
26.
Recommendation Systems
2min
27.
Optimized for for the Types of Metrics That These Companies Want to Optimize for and Still Could Be Better
2min
28.
How to Use Artificial Intelligence to Replace the Writers Room
3min
29.
Semaphore Is a Movie Studio and It's a Machine Learning Company
4min
30.
The Scaling Hypothesis
2min
31.
The Hidden Girl by Francois Sule
3min
32.
The Singularity Trilogy
5min
33.
The Role of Science Fiction in AI
6min
In episode 61 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ken Liu.
Ken is an author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he is the author of silkpunk epic fantasy series Dandelion Dynasty and short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. Prior to writing full-time, Ken worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant.
Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here!
Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on Twitter
Outline:
* (00:00) Intro
* (02:00) How Ken Liu became Ken Liu: A Saga
* (03:10) Time in the tech industry, interest in symbolic machines
* (04:40) Determining what stories to write, (07:00) art as failed communication
* (07:55) Law as creating abstract machines, importance of successful communication, stories in law
* (13:45) Misconceptions about science fiction
* (18:30) How we’ve been misinformed about literature and stories in school, stories as expressing multivalent truths, Dickens on narration (29:00)
* (31:20) Stories as imposing structure on the world
* (35:25) Silkpunk as aesthetic and writing approach
* (39:30) If modernity is a translated experience, what is it translated from? Alternative sources for the American pageant
* (47:30) The value of silkpunk for technologists and building the future
* (52:40) The engineer as poet
* (59:00) Technology language as constructing societies, what it is to be a technologist
* (1:04:00) The technology of language
* (1:06:10) The Google Wordcraft Workshop and co-writing with LaMDA
* (1:14:10) Possibilities and limitations of LMs in creative writing
* (1:18:45) Ken’s short fiction
* (1:19:30) Short fiction as a medium
* (1:24:45) “The Perfect Match” (from The Paper Menagerie and other stories)
* (1:34:00) Possibilities for better recommender systems
* (1:39:35) “Real Artists” (from The Hidden Girl and other stories)
* (1:47:00) The scaling hypothesis and creativity
* (1:50:25) “The Gods have not died in vain” & Moore’s Proof epigraph (The Hidden Girl)
* (1:53:10) More of The Singularity Trilogy (The Hidden Girl)
* (1:58:00) The role of science fiction today and how technologists should engage with stories
* (2:01:53) Outro
Links:
* The Dandelion Dynasty Series: Speaking Bones is out in paperback
* Books/Stories/Projects Mentioned
* “Evaluative Soliloquies” in Google Wordcraft
* The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
* The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe
Get the Snipd app for free
Share
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Save any
moment
Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated transcript and title
Share
& Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode