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Rewriting Our A.I. Future: How Speculative Fiction Can Debug Dystopian Cultural Programming

“Infothek for Real Utopias,” a project by Reinventing Society (https://realutopien.info/)

When you think about what kind of relationship humans will have with artificial intelligence in the future, are you scared or excited to live in that world? 

If your ideas about the future of artificial intelligence come from Hollywood movies or popular books, you might envision one where humans are at war with A.I., oppressed by A.I., or eliminated entirely by killer machines. 

In our previous blog post, we made the case for why now is the time to uplift fictional narratives that imagine a future of collaboration and coexistence with artificial intelligence. 

This week, we’ll take a deeper look at how we can use speculative fiction (spec-fic) as a vehicle to test-drive more optimistic visions of the future.

The Oxford Research Encyclopedia defines speculative fiction as “a mode of thought-experimenting that … represents a global reaction of human creative imagination struggling to envision a possible future at the time of a major transition from local to global humanity.” 

The genre is more than just a thought experiment, though. It’s no coincidence that many people see advanced technology like A.I. as something to be feared. Decades of sci-fi narratives depicting rogue, malevolent, and merciless artificial intelligence have programmed techno-anxiety into our culture. But we can change the programming with new narratives. 

Today, we’ll discuss why dystopian and post-apocalyptic narratives are so prominent, examples of how speculative fiction of the past prototyped real-life modern technology, how the genre can be a tool for social and technological progress, and what kind of future-looking narratives we should be test-driving right now. 

“Infothek for Real Utopias,” a project by Reinventing Society (https://realutopien.info/)

The Dystopia Problem: Our Cultural Programming

Scholars argue that American and Western attitudes toward futuristic technology are still trapped in the mid-twentieth century when the world mostly abandoned nuclear fission technology for fear it would kill us all. In his “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” billionaire tech investor Marc Andreessen says that the worldwide retreat from nuclear power, despite its many advantages over fossil fuels, was the “most catastrophic mistake in Western society” in his lifetime. 

The cynical and cautious attitudes toward powerful technology that developed back then haven’t been limited to nuclear energy. The Dutch Historian and Sociologist Fred Polak suggested in 1973 that Western society tricked itself into a general state of nihilism about the future by scaring ourselves away from nuclear technology. In The Image of the Future, Polak asked, “Is the decline in utopian thinking not also a decline in social progress itself?” especially compared with the more optimistic views of the future popular before World War II. One example of the optimistic views is seen in the World’s Fairs (especially 1933-34 Chicago “Century of Progress”), showcasing technological achievements and forecasting an automated, prosperous future.  

Nihilism, cynicism, and risk aversion still dominate mainstream culture’s imaginings of the future. But instead of nuclear power, now it’s artificial intelligence, robots, and human obsolescence fuelling our anxieties in the twenty-first century. 

We see these anxieties reinforced year after year in popular movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, I, Robot, Ex Machina, and The Matrix series; videogames like Cyberpunk 2077; and TV shows like Westworld and Black Mirror

We’ve previously highlighted the value of dystopian narratives that make us think critically about how our decisions will impact us in the future, like in Episode 42 with Marlies Wirth. However, critics have noted that many modern dystopian narratives lack the same social conscience. Harvard professor, journalist, historian, and author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman Jill Lepore wrote in an essay for The New Yorker that

“Dystopia used to be a fiction of resistance; it’s become a fiction of submission, the fiction of an untrusting, lonely, and sullen twenty-first century… It cannot imagine a better future, and it doesn’t ask anyone to bother to make one.”

Jill Lepore

The challenge we face in imagining better futures is more significant than the simple fact that conflict is central to a compelling narrative. James Pethokoukis, who writes about technology and the economy for the American Enterprise Institute, says in The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised that “we can’t just blame Hollywood” for the mainstream dominance of cynical narratives about the future. “We choose to watch movies that reflect our values and preferences. And it would appear that our values are unhealthily risk-averse and dystopian. Changing that reality won’t be easy.” (And we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge social media’s impact on this, optimizing for sensationalism and fear-mongering).

But these dystopian narratives aren’t just limiting our imagination – they’re forcing us into a false dichotomy about our future with artificial intelligence. We’re told we must choose: either embrace A.I.’s total dominance or fight against it completely. Accept algorithmic governance or reject technological progress entirely. Submit to automation or protect human jobs at all costs.

This binary thinking mirrors how we once approached nuclear technology – as either humanity’s savior or its destruction. That false choice led to decades of missed opportunities in clean energy production. Today, we risk making the same mistake with A.I., allowing our fears to blind us to the nuanced possibilities that lie between total embrace and total rejection.

“Infothek for Real Utopias,” a project by Reinventing Society (https://realutopien.info/)

Beyond the Binary: Seeking Nuanced Futures

Just like nuclear fission has neither destroyed the world nor liberated it from the constraints of energy production, we must recognize that the best future for everyone exists somewhere between dystopia and utopia. 

We see that nuance every day at Creativity Squared through our discussions with creatives who praise the collaborative and productivity benefits of artificial intelligence while also acknowledging how A.I. might change our relationship with creativity. We see it in Hollywood, where A.I. is lowering the cost of production while also threatening jobs. We see it in the flurry of copyright lawsuits and licensing deals that have rocked the publishing industry recently. These cases demonstrate the complex relationship between human welfare and technological progress. The solution is not as simple as sacrificing one goal to advance the other. 

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein drilled down on this point, arguing that Silicon Valley’s dream of a techno-capitalist, individualist, survival-of-the-fittest utopia is a form of “reactionary futurism.” In a 2023 column, Klein said that treating human welfare as an afterthought in pursuing progress, as figures like Marc Andreessen advocate for, “will not speed up a better future. It will turn people against the politics and policies of growth, just as it did before.” Most importantly,

“Trust is the most essential technology of all.”

Ezra Klein

To find our way out of this binary and reactionary thinking, we can look to historical examples of how other groups have used speculative fiction to imagine new possibilities when faced with seemingly insurmountable narrative constraints.

“Infothek for Real Utopias,” a project by Reinventing Society (https://realutopien.info/)

Speculative Fiction as a Tool for Change

Throughout history, speculative fiction has served as a powerful tool for those pushed to society’s margins to imagine better lives. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia describes the genre as “a tool to dismantle the traditional Western cultural bias in favor of literature imitating reality.” Not only that, but also as a

“Quest for the recovery of the sense of awe and wonder.”

From Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which envisions a Black female protagonist creating a new belief system and community in a climate-ravaged America, to Samuel Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which reimagined sexuality and gender through the lens of interstellar civilization, marginalized writers have used speculative fiction to envision worlds free from current social constraints. Butler’s Bloodchild explored power dynamics and mutual dependency between species as a metaphor for racial cooperation, while Delany’s Trouble on Triton depicted a utopian society where fluid identity and radical personal choice are the norm. These authors didn’t just imagine worlds where their communities could survive systemic oppression — they created visions of futures where marginalized identities became sources of strength, innovation, and leadership. 

As anxiety about A.I.’s impact on humanity grows, we find ourselves in a similar position: we need stories that imagine radically different realities rather than a future where we live in a more comfortable version of the same status quo…or worse. 

The late American speculative fiction author Ursula Le Guin predicted this moment almost perfectly in her 2014 National Book Award acceptance speech, saying that “hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.” She continues,

“We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries — the realists of a larger reality.”

Ursula Le Guin

Creativity Squared’s recent guest, professor, historian, economist, and media scholar Dr. Walter Greason uses the term “co-powering” to describe bottom-up, grassroots, community-centered advocacy, which he sees as the best way to counter the prescriptive influence of dominant narratives from Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The idea is that we, as citizens and communities, don’t have to imagine ourselves living in somebody else’s vision of the future when we can co-create versions that better reflect our values, priorities, and aspirations. 

Co-powering ignores the false dichotomy of “progress versus human welfare” in favor of a “both — and” mindset. Rather than situating our future in an explicit dystopia or utopia, his work in reimagining the fictional home of Marvel’s Black Panther superhero depicts a future where quality of life and technological progress go hand-in-hand. 

The power of these speculative narratives extends beyond mere inspiration – they’ve actually helped shape technological and social progress throughout history. The first communications satellite was launched in 1962, almost two decades after British scientist, futurist, and sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke (who cowrote 2001: A Space Odyssey) proposed the idea in a magazine article. Motorola engineers designed the world’s first flip phone based on the personal communicators featured in Star Trek. More than twenty years before the first Oculus VR headsets were sold, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash speculated a future where people could interact via digital avatars on the internet.   

These are just a few of history’s countless examples where innovators turned science fiction into fact, demonstrating the cyclical relationship between imagination and reality. This is the hidden power of speculative fiction: it doesn’t just predict the future, it helps create it by giving innovators, developers, and society at large a tangible vision to work toward. As we navigate through the age of artificial intelligence, it’s critical that we leverage optimistic and aspirational narratives to propel ourselves toward the future we desire. 

“Infothek for Real Utopias,” a project by Reinventing Society (https://realutopien.info/)

The Future We Imagine Is the Future We’ll Build

As philosopher and physicist David Deutsch reminds us,

“We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined, and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds.”

David Deutsch

This responsibility extends beyond hope — it requires us to actively imagine and create the future we want. The stories we tell about artificial intelligence today will shape its development tomorrow. These stories shouldn’t come exclusively from Silicon Valley boardrooms or Hollywood studios, but from diverse voices across all communities, each contributing their vision of how A.I. can enhance rather than diminish human potential.

Ursula Le Guin called for “realists of a larger reality” — writers who could see beyond our fear-stricken society to imagine real grounds for hope. The flip phones in our pockets and the satellites in our skies began as speculative fiction. The future we’re building with A.I. will likewise be shaped by the stories we tell today.

The choice isn’t between accepting or rejecting A.I., nor between utopia and dystopia. It’s whether we’ll let others imagine our future for us, or whether we’ll embrace our power to co-create it. The real story of A.I. isn’t written yet — and with your voice added to the collective narrative, it can be better than anything we’ve imagined so far.

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