Sci-Fi and Scarcity Driven Purposefulness

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If we relax the constraint on what we might call scarcity driven purposefulness, then a lot of the problems associated with capitalism, such as homelessness and poverty, simply dissolve.
This is because, as AI becomes more capable, it will be able to create a million paintings and stories, run our companies, and experience day at the park for us, among other things. However, these activities will not have the same meaning as they do when we are limited by our human limitations.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time” is about an advanced civilization built by sentient spiders. A sequel, “Children of Ruin,” is about a society run by superintelligent octopuses. I love these books. They’re remarkably serious about their premises, and by the end, it’s human civilization and our limited sensorium that come to seem strange.

But Tchaikovsky’s latest book, “Children of Memory,” ostensibly about crows, read as something very different to me: the best fictional representation I’ve read of what it is like to interact with, and perhaps even be, an artificial intelligence system like ChatGPT. It was a very strange read at this moment. And it made possible an episode I’ve been wanting to do for months.

Long before we have to face the question of whether A.I. is sentient, we will have to face the question of whether it is creative, and that will turn into the question of whether we, truly, are creative. And so Tchaikovsky and I talk about whether there’s a meaningful difference between human creativity and A.I. problem solving, why he believes this is a “profoundly scary time” to be a writer or a designer, what an explosion of A.I.-produced content would mean for human society and the human spirit, whether the advancement of A.I. could exhaust avenues for human originality and much more.

Mentioned:

"Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson

Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve

Book Recommendations:

Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolf

After Atlas by Emma Newman

Babel by R. F. Kuang

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You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carol Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.