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#AI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #Socialism #Utopianism #Marxism: "So: I’ve now combined my interest in artificial intelligence with my interest in utopian literature and produced a book I think you’ll agree is quite remarkable. It’s called Echoland: A Comprehensive Guide to a Nonexistent Place, and it is a vision of what a world transformed by “AI” might look like. It’s a kind of updated version of Looking Backward for the 21st century, envisioning a fully automated socialist society where leisure is taken seriously, healthcare is free to all, gender categories have disappeared, and technology is put toward socially valuable rather than destructive uses. It’s a place where deprivation, militarism, and inequality have disappeared. I present a vision of a world where human beings manage to solve their basic problems and invent things that will help them thrive (and take care of the planet). But it’s not a “techno-solutionist” work. Echoland is clear that without being coupled to egalitarian values, new technology can be destructive, and that it is we, not our technology, that must solve our problems.
There’s also a bit of a twist to Echoland, because it’s not just a description of the World of Tomorrow. It also visualizes it in pictures. I’ve used AI image generators to produce imaginary objects from the future society, including train tickets, stuffed animals, and movie posters. I’ve designed clothes and cafes, album covers and textbooks. You’ll find everything in it from Soviet Afrofuturism to “Marx vs. Batman.” The book contains nearly 1,000 AI-generated images, and I’ve tried to demonstrate the remarkable range of capacities that these generators have. I think the results, which it’s often hard to believe were generated by a machine, will surprise you (and may even alarm you a bit)."