Newly Forgotten Technologies: Stories From AI-Free Futures
In this current era of AI hype and hyperbole, we are often told that AI will play a major part in all our futures, and will completely reshape work and our daily lives. This situation seems to primarily benefit tech companies and their investors, while its impact on jobs, communities, and the environment is increasingly destructive. This future is presented to us as if it’s inevitable, and the only way for our societies to progress.
But what would a future without AI look like? What would happen if we ban, overturn, resist, or simply ignore AI?
Newly Forgotten Technologies: Stories From AI-Free Futures is a soundtracked collection of speculative near-future fiction about how we move past the current exploitative age of AI, and the reasons why we might want (or need) to do this.
Across eight short stories, plausible near-futures without A.I. are presented; in some it is banned, in others it is forgotten, phased-out, surpassed or surpressed. Some stories focus on large-scale cultural changes, and some on smaller communities and events. Some of these are futures we might want, some are futures we should work to avoid. None of them describe a future with sentient computers or self-aware machines.
Each story is narrated by a different ‘A.I. voice assistant’, e.g. Alexa, Siri, and the Google assistant, all of which can be heard to fail at being believably human in different ways. The stories are soundtracked by a score composed only from these voices, in which they have been dissected, distorted, and recomposed into new forms that highlight the machinic and dis-human nature of synthetic voices.
Stories are the greatest communication technology we have ever created. They survive catastrophes, the fall of empires, and the death of languages. I believe we have an urgent need for more stories that present alternative ways of being than what has been offered to us, to make more futures feel possible than the limited and self-destructive worldviews of techno-capitalism.
There were no generative AI technologies used in the making of this work.
The album is available to stream on Bandcamp.