In an interview with The New York Times in September 2019, Jeanette Winterson was asked what sort of reading she did while writing and working on a book, and what type of books she would avoid. She said,
When I am writing I do all my research before I start and don’t refer back to anything until the editing stage. If I read for pleasure it will be anything well known and loved but never anything new. I have so many books in my house that there is plenty to choose from. When I am writing I like looking at old photographs of cities — London or New York or Singapore and so on.
I'm glad that the author came to speak at the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) this year. It was such a treat for me to hear Jeanette Winterson speak in person for an hour to a small audience at at the Singapore (ticketed and held at the Mandala Club). This session was moderated by Kenneth Kwok. She discussed about how she writes and what inspires her. She also held a ticketed Keynote 'If We Can Imagine It'. Moderated by Mrigaa Sethi, the author referenced her previous book and talked about sex bots, and from all accounts, it was a thoroughly entertaining and lovely lecture; too bad I couldn't be there.
The esteemed author believed that climate breakdown and artificial intelligence will dictate the way we live; they have already done so and will influence these faster in the future. In a lengthy interview with Claire Armitstead for The Guardian in July 2021, the author spoke about how she placed women at the center of technological innovations since the Industrial Revolution,
12 Bytes also includes a chapter on the sexbot problem, which touches on one of the book’s most insistent, and nerdiest, themes: that a benign Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will not come to pass until we have divested the patriarchy of its control over the datasets on which all artificial intelligence is based. This means writing women back into history as active contributors to the modern world, capable of imagining the future, breaking codes and solving the knottiest scientific problems.
“It’s disappointing. It’s so crude, and it’s the place where the investment is going,” says Winterson of the global sexbot industry. “On the one hand, I talk about why an AI companion is a lovely idea, whether it’s a robo pet or just a voice that talks to you. That’s the positive side. But it’s always the same with humans, isn’t it? Then, we have sexbots, which are based on 1950 stereotypes about how a woman should behave: acquiescent, willing, always ready and patient in the home. How can that combo of 50s behaviour and porn-star looks be good for us as Homo sapiens?”
I haven't read all of Jeanette Winterson's books. I like her writing, themes and focus. But I'm not a die-hard fan. I read a few, and of course I read the recent releases. We have the most recently released '12 Bytes'. First published in 2021 in the UK, this edition was released with this line 'How We Got Here, Where We Might Go Next'. The second US edition published in 2022 is titled '12 Bytes: How Artificial Intelligence Will Change The Way We Live and Love'. (Reviews here, here, here and here.)
These 12 long essays touch on the role of artificial intelligence (AI), on humanity, art and religion, and how we live and love. The author categorized the 12 essays into four zones — ZONE ONE: The Past, ZONE TWO: What's Your Superpower?, ZONE THREE: Sex and Other Stories, ZONE FOUR: The Future.
It's not an easy read, I confess. I had to read it twice. These aren't stories. This isn't fiction. It's Jeanette Winterson's musings on artificial intelligence, computing technology, space exploration, climate change and our future. You'll need to decide if you like the author's tone of voice and the direction of this discussion. It's a history lesson delving into ancient philosophy, Ada Lovelace and Mary Shelley, SpaceX and its satellites, and the same old land grab at the newest frontier — space. Unfortunately this name, Tesla's egotistical narcissistic owner who really isn't a genius, keeps coming up in the discussions. Dammit.
My favorite essay has to be 'Gnostic Know-How' from 'ZONE TWO: What's Your Superpower?' The author wrote exactly what I've thought about and grimaced at as the pandemic pushed new technology to the forefront. The cult of tech and the cult of whatever-New-Light-Church aren't dissimilar. In fact, there're so many eerie parallels in their beliefs, the progression of rituals to 'eternal life'. We might as well worship chips and core processors. Our God is Electricity.
Our new AI religion has what all religions have.
Believers: the Singularity disciples, the Transhuman evangelists (there's even a Mormon group), the Biohax converts, the life-extension enthusiasts, the start-up brain-unloaders, the science labs printing 3D body parts, the stem-cell researchers who will 'match' your perfect body ideal — so many, so different, yet all of these sharing a Gnostic unorthodoxy of loosely overlapping ideas anchored to the central, but updating text of accelerating change, inside and outside the human body.
On the other side are the Sceptics, who take up the Orthodox position of believing in the unique specialness of being human. They do not believe that altering the human substrate can happen in the near future. Brain upload is sci-fi. AI promises are a Utopian/Dystopian distraction from climate breakdown, disaster capitalism, gender and race inequality, and the increasing surveillance and manipulation of our lives by Big Tech.
And then there is the priestly cast of tech types. Mostly men, who believe themselves to be chosen/ superior/ the new directors of humanity's future. The ones with Special Knowledge; the hard maths mysteries of programming the next world.
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Not for nothing is the coming glory of AI often called the Rapture of the Geeks. Or Nerds. The Rapture, for Christians, is when Jesus returns, and the Saved get swept up to eternal life.
Those of us brought up in religious homes are fascinated and horrified in equal measure by the similarities between AI enthusiasts and ole-time religion.
You know the basics: This world is not my home. I'm just passing through. My Self/Soul is separate from the Body. After death there is another life.
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