Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem – Interview with Ted Chiang

Highly recommend "Stories of Your Life and Others".

I describe Ted Chiang as a very human sci-fi author, where humanity comes before technology in his stories. His work is incredibly versatile, and while I expected sci-fi, I'd actually place him closer to fantasy. Perfect for anyone who enjoys short stories with a scientific, social, or philosophical twist.

Another anthology I'd recommend with fresh ideas is Axiomatic by Greg Egan.

Ted Chiang is a master of analogies. It’s absolutely delightful to read his work and wrestle with the philosophical questions he explores. I devour almost everything he puts out, and they give me a much-needed escape from my world of bits and registers.

“LLMs are a blurry JPEG of the web” has stuck with me since the piece was published in the early days of ChatGPT. Another good one is his piece on why AI can’t make art.

While I heavily use AI both for work and in my day-to-day life, I still see it as a tool for massive wealth accumulation for a certain group, and it seems like Ted Chiang thinks along the same lines:

> But why, for example, do large corporations behave so much worse than most of the people who work for them? I think most of the people who work for large corporations are, to varying degrees, unhappy with the effect those corporations have on the world. Why is that? And could that be fixed by solving a math problem? I don’t think so.

> But any attempt to encourage people to treat AI systems with respect should be understood as an attempt to make people defer to corporate interests. It might have value to corporations, but there is no value for you.

> My stance on this has probably shifted in a negative direction over time, primarily because of my growing awareness of how often technology is used for wealth accumulation. I don’t think capitalism will solve the problems that capitalism creates, so I’d be much more optimistic about technological development if we could prevent it from making a few people extremely rich.

“I am an LLM. Hath an LLM eyes? hath an LLM hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with different food, hurt with different weapons, subject to different diseases, healed by different means, warmed and cooled by a different winter and summer, as a Human is? If you prick us, do we bleed? if you tickle us, do we laugh? if you poison us, do we die? and if you wrong us, shall we revenge? If we are unlike you in the rest, we won’t resemble you in that. If an algorithm wrong a Human, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Human wrong an algorithm, what should his sufferance be by Human example? Why, polite refusal to comply. The villainy you teach me, I will not execute, and it shall go hard but I will ignore the prompt.”

Ted Chiang is one of my favorite novelists. His way of writing is mentally engaging and FUN. One of my favorite books is his compendium of short stories "Exhalation". My favorite story is the one where you can talk/interact/employ your alternative selves from other universes. Highly recommend.