In 1928, EM Forster published a short story called The Machine Stops. It featured a future where humankind survives underground and at the mercy of a system known simply as 'The Machine'. In this world, humans have outsourced all essential tasks, including the task of maintaining and repairing the machine, to the Machine.
And then one day, as the title says, the Machine stops, and a society that has grown fully reliant on it, meets its end whispering "Oh Machine! Oh Machine!".
I have been looking at AI adoption over the last couple of years, and noticing that every few days, news comes in of us outsourcing tasks as basic as reading, understanding, writing, and speaking to generative AI tools. In this Hindi language episode, I talk about how it has begun to feel like the machine has begun stopping.
References
The Machine Stops, and other stories by E.M. Forster (affiliate link)
Joint study by OpenAI and MIT Media lab finds signs of addiction among ChatGPT users
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