Yet Another Piece of AI-Pilled Speculative Fiction Has Gone Dangerously Viral

Once again, AI people are letting a work of fiction seep into their brains. This time it’s a piece of speculative fiction for Europeans called “Europe 2031.” Before that, it was Citrini Research’s ”The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis,” a story about white collar unemployment that caused stocks to dip. Before that, it was AI 2027 in which a superintelligent AI kills humanity. The sitting Vice President of the United States says he read that one.

Europe 2031 was written by eight people referring to themselves as “a small group of AI researchers, think-tankers, and investors who have spent their careers at the intersection of frontier AI and European policy.”

The power these documents have is not good for the world. I have some authority about this topic—a very small amount—because I wrote a book of hypothetical scenarios and managed to get it published in several countries.

Speculative writing starts from some apocalyptic ending, and then the writer works backwards. This is because fiction is a cheat. You toss out reality, and only write the steps it would take to get to your destination. You can be completely upfront about what you’re doing, but readers will still think you’re predicting the future.

I told my readers not to base decisions on what I wrote, and that gaming things out is just a mental habit that helps me control my own anxiety, but people who read my hypotheticals still tell me I scared them. Worse: they ask me for advice.

My lesson is that the written word is the best medium for scaring people, and that ideas that scare people are sticky.

So with that in mind, what’s scaring people now is a piece of speculative fiction about Europe not taking AI independence seriously enough. It starts as all good cheesy sci-fi should, with the kind of show-don’t-tell intro they teach you in college writing seminars:

Caroline splashes cold water on her face and looks at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her hands are shaking. She grips the edge of the sink and waits for it to pass. Through the small high window she can see a slice of Washington sky, flat and bright.

Oh God, what’s going to happen to poor Caroline?? Answer: She fails to convince Europe to act in time, and ends up bitter, disillusioned, and financially dependent on a billionaire friend after quitting her job. Oh, and her mom dies.

Zooming out, Europe is defenseless as AI powered hackers make mincemeat of its outdated safeguards. The European economy and probably the EU itself are looking at almost certain death after the continent is shut out of the AI race. The  two big bullies, the U.S. and China, hold all the cards.

“Even in 2026, the continent could still have changed course, had it shown the courage and political will to take drastic measures,” the authors write toward the end of Europe 2031.

According to the Guardian, the story has fed “a feverish discussion of the urgency for EU tech sovereignty” amid the G7 talks. Members of the European parliament have read it, and unofficial U.K.-German diplomatic talks have been informed by it. That’s frightening.

My take on speculative stories is that they are lies that can nonetheless clear away mental fog, particularly if the situation proposed is one people already talk about without much reflection on what it might take to get there. But much better writers than me have regretted parts of their speculations. For instance, Kim Stanley Robinson reportedly felt remorse after seeming to endorse crypto as part of a climate change solution in his book Ministry for the Future.

Riveting talk by Kim Stanley Robinson this aft @Stanford. Says he regrets ever mentioning bitcoin/crypto in Ministry for the Future (calls it a fraudulent scam) & spoke about how we are in a very different structure of feeling on the polycrisis now than when he wrote it in 2019 pic.twitter.com/fcw6zZCa7E

— Britt Wray, PhD (@brittwray) June 5, 2022

So remember, kids: stories are lies first and foremost, and should always be treated as such.