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Ken Liu: What Science Fiction Can Teach Us

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Feb 23, 2023

02:02:40

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INSIGHT

Stories as Failed Communication

Stories often fail as direct communication because readers interpret them differently from the author's intent.
Great literature allows multiple interpretations, showing that art is more about self-communication than clear messaging.

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INSIGHT

Narrative Shapes Human Understanding

Humans understand reality through narratives, constructing stories that shape our identity and values.
This narrative tendency affects how we perceive reality and moral systems, blending understanding with storytelling.

insights

INSIGHT

Silkpunk Reimagines Modernity

Modernity is often experienced as translated, shaped by cultural references like Rome or East Asia.
Silk punk reimagines modernity through classical East Asian philosophy and technology, exploring new cultural narratives.

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How Did You Get to Write Science Fiction?

01:56 • 4min

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The Art of Story Writing

06:16 • 6min

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Is Sci-Fi Really Good at Predicting the Future?

11:48 • 4min

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Is There a Failure of Communication?

15:49 • 6min

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What Is the Message of the Dragon?

21:21 • 3min

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Is There a Commitment to Science Fiction?

24:41 • 5min

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The Narrative Fallacy Is So Important

29:20 • 2min

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Is There a Narrative Core to Artificial Intelligence?

31:11 • 4min

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The Dandelion Dynasty

35:19 • 5min

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The Silk Punk Aspect of American Style Modernity

40:14 • 6min

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The Impacts of Technology and How We Should Approach Them

45:53 • 4min

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Fostering Individualism

50:04 • 2min

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The Engineer and the Dandelion Dynasty

The Technology Language Isn't Just About Building Things

58:30 • 5min

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Changing the Language of Technology

01:03:24 • 3min

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How Do Machines Replace Human Creativity?

01:06:03 • 4min

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Language Models Are Designed to Engage in Chat-Based Interfaces

01:09:35 • 3min

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Is AI Really a Revolutionary Tool?

01:13:03 • 4min

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The Hidden Girl and the Paper Menagerie

01:16:53 • 3min

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Writing a Novel Um Sure Fiction for Me Is Um Sure

01:20:22 • 4min

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The Perfect Match in the Paper Menagerie

01:24:25 • 4min

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Machine Translation Is a Work of Art

01:28:20 • 6min

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Is There a Better Way to Make Better Recommendations?

01:33:52 • 2min

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Recommendation Systems

01:36:14 • 2min

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Optimized for for the Types of Metrics That These Companies Want to Optimize for and Still Could Be Better

01:37:48 • 2min

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How to Use Artificial Intelligence to Replace the Writers Room

01:39:20 • 3min

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Semaphore Is a Movie Studio and It's a Machine Learning Company

01:42:19 • 4min

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The Scaling Hypothesis

01:46:41 • 2min

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The Hidden Girl by Francois Sule

01:48:43 • 3min

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The Singularity Trilogy

01:52:02 • 5min

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The Role of Science Fiction in AI

01:57:04 • 6min

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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.

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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:

* Ken’s homepage

* 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

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