Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Imagine This a climate damage world where advertising funded robots
Speaker 2: known as Hum's, provide all the manual, labor and constant
Speaker 2: surveillance over society. Maywebb has just lost her job to
Speaker 2: AI and is now using proceeds from an experimental operation
Speaker 2: to take her family on a holiday to one of
Speaker 2: the last bits of nature left a botanical garden. This
Speaker 2: is the World of Hum, a novel by the author
Speaker 2: Helen Phillips and the winner of the twenty twenty six
Speaker 2: Climate Fiction Prize. It's a book where anxiety is about AI,
Speaker 2: climate and capitalism collide. Helen is a professor of creative
Speaker 2: writing at New York's Brooklyn College and has written six books.
Speaker 2: I got the opportunity to ask her about the inspiration
Speaker 2: for HUM and how she's used her own anxieties to
Speaker 2: fuel her writing. This is Zero. I'm Akshadrati This week
Speaker 2: how climate fiction is Expanding. This is the latest episode
Speaker 2: in Zero's Imagine series exploring how art is interpreting the
Speaker 2: climate crisis. You can find the previous episodes in the
Speaker 2: series with authors like Kim Stanley, Robinson, Abi Dhari and
Speaker 2: George Saunders linked in the show notes, here's my interview
Speaker 2: with Helen Phillips. Helen, Welcome to Zero.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Now, without spoiling it, can you just give a brief
Speaker 2: summary of Hum to the listeners who may not have
Speaker 2: read the book already.
Speaker 1: Of course, So Hum begins with the protagonist may losing
Speaker 1: her job to artificial intelligence and desperate to make money
Speaker 1: for her family, she becomes a guinea pig in an
Speaker 1: experiment that alters her face so that it can't be
Speaker 1: recognized by surveillance, and with the proceeds from this strange operation,
Speaker 1: she buys her family three night passes to this one
Speaker 1: beautiful remaining green space within their city of the future,
Speaker 1: where there are still animals and wilderness for her children
Speaker 1: to experience. That it is, as I said, said in
Speaker 1: a somewhat dystopian future, though many readers have told me
Speaker 1: it is fairly recognizable and significantly, the world, alongside humans
Speaker 1: is inhabited by super intelligent embodied robots called hums, hence
Speaker 1: the title.
Speaker 2: It was a really fun read. It's super fast based,
Speaker 2: and yes, I mean dystopian parts come through in the
Speaker 2: story for sure, but there are also funny parts. There
Speaker 2: are these vignettes, as your readers have told you, which
Speaker 2: are completely recognizable, like the face that people make when
Speaker 2: they get sucked into their phone, which we see all
Speaker 2: around us as we're traveling or commuting, or then these
Speaker 2: like strange interactions that we have at least with chatboards
Speaker 2: these days, but essentially ones that you would have with
Speaker 2: robots as well. There's just something off about the conversation,
Speaker 2: like instantly recognizable and really lovely scenes. But if we
Speaker 2: focus on the climate side of this, because in your
Speaker 2: description that doesn't play a central role in the plot
Speaker 2: of the story, but it is there constantly in the
Speaker 2: background and in direct ways as people are either reading
Speaker 2: the news about it, the characters are dealing with air quality.
Speaker 2: How much did you have to think about what it
Speaker 2: is climate is doing in this story.
Speaker 1: Well, I would say that, for better or worse, one
Speaker 1: of my greatest inspirations as a writer is my anxiety,
Speaker 1: and that's very much true with this novel. When I
Speaker 1: was setting out to write Ham, I was anxious very
Speaker 1: much about climate change. I was anxious about artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: I was anxious about the future that we are creating
Speaker 1: for our children, and so that climate anxiety really suffuses
Speaker 1: the whole book, as you say, in all sorts of
Speaker 1: little ways that her, my protagonist, May has a daughter
Speaker 1: who's very anxious to go outside when the air quality
Speaker 1: is poor, and is really keyed into that and checks
Speaker 1: that every morning to see what the air quality is.
Speaker 1: Even the fact that May spends all of this money
Speaker 1: quite foolishly, I might add, she does not have the
Speaker 1: money to spare to go to the botanical gardens, but
Speaker 1: because her children don't have a lot of ways to
Speaker 1: access nature because of the detriment of the environment, this
Speaker 1: is such a priority to her that she spends her
Speaker 1: money in this way. So that climate anxiety is just
Speaker 1: prevalent in so many different elements of the story.
Speaker 2: And as someone who writes about climate change a lot,
Speaker 2: there are aspects of climate change that make me anxious.
Speaker 2: There are aspects of trying to tackle climate change that
Speaker 2: make me very excited. But on the anxiety side, why
Speaker 2: is it useful to write about the anxiety?
Speaker 1: Well, I think for one, it's cathartic just to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that anxiety and to bring it out into the open.
Speaker 1: I think that for a lot of people it's something
Speaker 1: that just adds an anxious hum to our days, but
Speaker 1: maybe we try to look away from it because it
Speaker 1: feels like there's not a ton you can do about it.
Speaker 1: So one is just bringing it out and for myself
Speaker 1: processing that anxiety that I do feel on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: We've had quite a summer here in the United States,
Speaker 1: as people are having all over the world, but a
Speaker 1: lot of wildfires burning in the United States and Canada.
Speaker 1: We've had a real expansion and where ticks are living
Speaker 1: because of climate change, just a lot of changes that
Speaker 1: people are living with extreme heat and all of that.
Speaker 1: So one reason to write a book that has climate
Speaker 1: anxiety and it is to just create a way to
Speaker 1: begin a conversation about that. And then also in the
Speaker 1: process of writing the book and beginning with that climate anxiety,
Speaker 1: I read a lot about it, and I feel like
Speaker 1: the more you read, as you say, the more anxietnciety,
Speaker 1: but also the more solutions you begin to see. So
Speaker 1: the research process itself was extremely meaningful to me in
Speaker 1: rather than just having this be an ambient anxiety, actually
Speaker 1: coming to understand more what the situation is and educating
Speaker 1: myself about it.
Speaker 2: There is a tendency that people have and this has
Speaker 2: been the case for a long time now, of turning
Speaker 2: off on bad environmental stories because most people don't feel
Speaker 2: like there's agency they can't do anything about it. But
Speaker 2: when it comes to AI, I don't sense the same
Speaker 2: thing from the readers. Even though you know there are
Speaker 2: plenty of AI dystopian stories to go around, and the
Speaker 2: harms it's doing through the climate and the environment, and
Speaker 2: the harms it's doing to people's way of thinking to
Speaker 2: maybe social connections, etc. There is still appetite for people
Speaker 2: to want to engage with that story, which they don't
Speaker 2: seem to have with climate. Why is that?
Speaker 1: I don't know why that is, and I think it
Speaker 1: does have something to do with just the vastness of
Speaker 1: climate change and the complexity of both the natural systems
Speaker 1: and the political systems that would enable change to happen.
Speaker 1: I think that it can feel so overwhelming to think
Speaker 1: that human's activities are changing our beloved planet in such
Speaker 1: profound and really it feels like often uncontrollable ways. So
Speaker 1: I think it is a big question for anyone thinking
Speaker 1: about climate, and any journalists and any scientist, how do
Speaker 1: you talk about climate without filling people with such despair
Speaker 1: that there's a feeling of nihilism that comes with that.
Speaker 1: In terms of AI and people willingness, I think you're
Speaker 1: saying to engage with AI narratives and maybe even feel
Speaker 1: scared of AI in a more active way. I wonder
Speaker 1: if that's because AI just feels extremely present in our
Speaker 1: everyday lives. I think climate, for me, climate change does too.
Speaker 1: But you do a search and suddenly GPT is speaking
Speaker 1: to you. It's just it's really becoming so ever present.
Speaker 1: I think both AI and climate are ever present, but
Speaker 1: maybe the AI is even a little bit more in
Speaker 1: our faces at the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really interesting. It's sort of climate change is
Speaker 2: all pervasive but still a little bit far away, whereas
Speaker 2: AI is all pervasive and a little bit too close,
Speaker 2: and that makes people think a lot more. You talk
Speaker 2: about the duality of technology a lot in those stories.
Speaker 2: So you have this moment where May warrants her children
Speaker 2: and her husband do not be tight to their vices,
Speaker 2: and so she takes those away, and then in the
Speaker 2: process there are problems that come through. They're not able
Speaker 2: to do basic things, and so there are advantages that
Speaker 2: technologies bring, but also disadvantages that technologies bring that duality
Speaker 2: makes the story interesting, whereas climate change feels like a
Speaker 2: thing that just is bad. There is there's really no
Speaker 2: duality to it. How do you make a story be
Speaker 2: interesting if there isn't a duality? So how do you
Speaker 2: break the climate story interesting?
Speaker 1: Well? I first want to speak on your first point
Speaker 1: about the duality of tech in the book, which was
Speaker 1: extremely important to me when I was writing. I do
Speaker 1: not consider hum an anti tech book because of the
Speaker 1: very thing you said when she tries to separate her
Speaker 1: family from their technology, problems ensue from that. We are
Speaker 1: so enmeshed with these both miraculous and dangerous technologies all
Speaker 1: around us that we can't throw the baby out with
Speaker 1: the bathwater. And I actually we gave the book an
Speaker 1: epigraph on this very subject, so I want to share
Speaker 1: it with you and your listeners. The quote is from Paracelsus,
Speaker 1: who was a physician and alchemist, so this person was
Speaker 1: not writing about technology, but I think this quote is
Speaker 1: very relevant to our technologies and actually to climate change too.
Speaker 1: So the quote is poison is in everything, and no
Speaker 1: thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a
Speaker 1: poison or a remedy. And this idea that anything can
Speaker 1: be a poison and anything can be a remedy. It's
Speaker 1: all about how we use it. So it's not we
Speaker 1: can't stop using our earth. We have to in order
Speaker 1: to survive, but how can we use it in a
Speaker 1: way that is healthy and harmonious. And the same with
Speaker 1: our tech. We can't stop using technology, but how can
Speaker 1: we use it in a way that makes it a
Speaker 1: remedy rather than a poison. I think about this all
Speaker 1: the time, and this duality is very important to me
Speaker 1: in hum and in my own life. How do we
Speaker 1: find some kind of balance with our environment and our technology.
Speaker 2: If you read the most recent IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel
Speaker 2: Climate Change Report, if you read about what happens if
Speaker 2: we actually tackle climate change and reach in at zero
Speaker 2: by twenty fifty or even twenty seventy, is that the
Speaker 2: whole series of good things happen. Beyond just helping us
Speaker 2: protect and preserve some of the climate that we can
Speaker 2: over these next few decades, the air just becomes a
Speaker 2: lot cleaner than it ever was, even when we weren't
Speaker 2: worried about climate change. You know, people become much more
Speaker 2: resilient and being able to live to their full potential
Speaker 2: because they are now living in environments that are you know,
Speaker 2: for example, air conditioning will become much more accessible to
Speaker 2: poor people as a result of us pushing more efficient
Speaker 2: electric technologies. Solar power becomes you know, essentially the base
Speaker 2: power source for humanity, which it should be eventually, but
Speaker 2: just becomes so much more quickly because we are pushing
Speaker 2: for clean, renewable energy and thus reaches people who don't
Speaker 2: currently have access to energy. So there is a duality
Speaker 2: of climate being a good driving force for solutions, but
Speaker 2: that didn't come through in the book. To me, there
Speaker 2: were no climate solutions that I could spot in the book,
Speaker 2: whereas I could spot like the dystopian nature of tech,
Speaker 2: but also like the advantages that technology brings, like at
Speaker 2: one point the robot when it's paid for its ad
Speaker 2: free version, it's just so much nicer to talk to
Speaker 2: and so much more empathetic and so wise that you
Speaker 2: could actually eat, sit down and have dinner with it.
Speaker 2: But doesn't quite track for like the solution side of climate.
Speaker 2: Was that a deliberate choice? Like did you not want
Speaker 2: to talk about the fact that we are doing something
Speaker 2: to try and tackle climate change.
Speaker 1: In a way? I think what you're getting at with
Speaker 1: this point about climate change not having the duality that
Speaker 1: I've put in the book in terms of the artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence and technology gets at the point that for me,
Speaker 1: the climate change elements of the book are not the
Speaker 1: plot of the book, but the setting for the book.
Speaker 1: I think it is hard to make climate change into
Speaker 1: a plot, although it is quite dramatic. And now you've
Speaker 1: given me an interesting thought. What would it be like
Speaker 1: to write a novel where climate change was literally the
Speaker 1: central conflict? And how could I find the duality sufficient
Speaker 1: to drive a narrative forward. So maybe you've now given
Speaker 1: me my idea for my next book, So thank you
Speaker 1: for that. But in hum specifically, it is the setting
Speaker 1: for the book. It is the context. It is it
Speaker 1: motivates this woman to seek this place for her children.
Speaker 1: But she is an individual who's actually having a very
Speaker 1: difficult time. She's not very stable in her life, and
Speaker 1: she's not in the position to do anything about climate
Speaker 1: change except here on the news, Oh there's another terrible hurricane,
Speaker 1: or they're a fire, or her We learn on the
Speaker 1: first page of the book that her family's home burned
Speaker 1: in a fire, in a wildfire, and they didn't have money,
Speaker 1: just very scant insurance payments to buy a new home
Speaker 1: that wasn't in the forest where they had lived before.
Speaker 1: So climate change is affecting her in all sorts of ways.
Speaker 1: But maybe, like we were talking about before, she is
Speaker 1: just one strained, stressed mother with a lot of financial problems,
Speaker 1: and she is not able to deeply engage with the
Speaker 1: climate crisis except to say, let me get my kids
Speaker 1: so that they can have three nights in a forest,
Speaker 1: just to see what that's like. I do think that
Speaker 1: in the end, and I'll try to avoid spoilers here.
Speaker 1: The home has a moment where it proposes perspective futures,
Speaker 1: and some of those futures are a little bit solar
Speaker 1: punk in nature and offer glimpses just like tantalizing glimpses
Speaker 1: of the world that you're described, where solar panels are
Speaker 1: more common, and it seems like people have figured out
Speaker 1: a way to live in greater harmony. But it's really
Speaker 1: just the most tiny, tantalizing glimpse. And it is by
Speaker 1: way of the technology, perhaps ironically, that those images enter
Speaker 1: the book.
Speaker 2: After the break. Summer is here, and so is the
Speaker 2: reading season. I ask Helen Phillips for a few of
Speaker 2: her favorite book recommendations. If you're enjoying this episode of Zero,
Speaker 2: please take a moment to rate and review the show
Speaker 2: on witchevera platform you're listening on. Recently, listener Chevy Bolt wrote,
Speaker 2: every show seems informative without being augmentative. That's a gift, thanks, Chevy.
Speaker 2: I hope you're enjoying listening to this in your car.
Speaker 2: The AI aspect of it also brings with it sort
Speaker 2: of helplessness in May's life. You know, her job is
Speaker 2: taken away, and then suddenly, in the process of resolving
Speaker 2: the issues she faces, she has to give up so
Speaker 2: much of her life's data essentially to AI so that
Speaker 2: it can process it. There is a helplessness to the
Speaker 2: system being all pervasive and all controlling. You know, one
Speaker 2: aspect that you don't clearly define, but it's there. The
Speaker 2: private enterprises use HUM and the government uses HUM, and
Speaker 2: they intershare the data without actually there be any barriers
Speaker 2: between a private or a public enterprise. And that's sort
Speaker 2: of like very unsettling a future. But one aspect of
Speaker 2: this which I wanted to understand is there is no
Speaker 2: political dissent in this world. It doesn't feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: you'd never talk about like a trillionaire that's like all
Speaker 2: controlling of this AI, or a president who is controlling
Speaker 2: of the system. Was that a choice to not have
Speaker 2: like a point of focus for the other problems that
Speaker 2: AI brings.
Speaker 1: I did think about that, what is the political situation
Speaker 1: in this world? And it is completely off screen. The
Speaker 1: one thing we do learn early on in the book
Speaker 1: is that the AI, the hums, the embodied robots were
Speaker 1: created by a private corporation that has figured out how
Speaker 1: to embody the brain of the network in these really
Speaker 1: graceful and beautiful and sculptural robot bodies. So it is,
Speaker 1: as you just pointed out, and I think this is
Speaker 1: very important, it is a private company, but it's working
Speaker 1: so closely with the government that it's almost like there's
Speaker 1: no division or separation between the two. This is, like
Speaker 1: many things in the book, drawn from our own reality,
Speaker 1: where that is happening so much all the time. I
Speaker 1: think to something that I experienced just as a human
Speaker 1: and as a consumer, is these new technologies are just
Speaker 1: released upon us so quickly and surprisingly, and suddenly they're
Speaker 1: there and you're just living with them, and you've never
Speaker 1: had any time to think about it or prepare yourself
Speaker 1: for this fact that suddenly, when you do a Google search,
Speaker 1: it's giving you this intricate AI answer. You never signed
Speaker 1: up for it. So just this feeling that, whether it's
Speaker 1: the government or a corporation, suddenly you are in a
Speaker 1: new reality with a new technology, and you never even
Speaker 1: agreed to do it, and it's just there in your life.
Speaker 2: Talk me through things that you changed your mind on,
Speaker 2: because as a writer, we almost used writing as a
Speaker 2: way to process what's happening to us in the world.
Speaker 2: You've specifically talked about how you use writing to deal
Speaker 2: with anxiety. But having done a long project, did you
Speaker 2: change your mind on any of the aspects of either AI,
Speaker 2: or capitalism or climate.
Speaker 1: I think that one of the most interesting examples of
Speaker 1: that for this particular book was early in the writing process,
Speaker 1: I went to a talk given by the writer and
Speaker 1: professor Arthur I. Miller at Brooklyn College where I teach,
Speaker 1: and he had just published his book The Artist in
Speaker 1: the Machine with MIT, which is a fascinating book about
Speaker 1: the positive potential of human and AI collaborations. I believe
Speaker 1: it was published in twenty nineteen, which now feels so
Speaker 1: long ago in terms of where we are with Ai now.
Speaker 1: But his book and his talk and then our subsequent
Speaker 1: email exchange really enabled me to move away from the
Speaker 1: knee jerk reaction I have and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people have, and you can see it in popular
Speaker 1: culture the robots are here to destroy us all and
Speaker 1: a little bit more towards what are the possibilities for
Speaker 1: collaboration that could be very meaningful. I still don't know
Speaker 1: about that, but but it definitely enabled me to build
Speaker 1: the character of the HUM with a lot more nuance
Speaker 1: and compassion. And one thing that I've experienced is people
Speaker 1: who read the book have a lot of different reactions
Speaker 1: to the HUM, and their reactions change over the course
Speaker 1: of the book, and that's very valuable to me. That
Speaker 1: sometimes you're scared of the HUM and find it sinister,
Speaker 1: like this spy, and sometimes the HUM is extremely cute
Speaker 1: and charming and delightful. And then as you say, once
Speaker 1: you turn off the advertising feature becomes very wise and insightful.
Speaker 1: And this is how I feel about technologies. All of
Speaker 1: those different reactions, all of those different feelings, are feelings
Speaker 1: that I have towards technology. Sort of somewhere between this
Speaker 1: is terrifying and this is miraculous. And I really wanted
Speaker 1: the character of the hum to embody that, and Miller's
Speaker 1: book helped me arrive there.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is not core to our conversation, but
Speaker 2: the aspects of how advertising shows up in the book
Speaker 2: and the all pervasive, seamless, annoying but weirdly interesting moments
Speaker 2: in which advertising shows up is just fascinating. And I
Speaker 2: think it is the closest I've seen anybody capture the
Speaker 2: kind of lives we live today, with how much advertising
Speaker 2: we're facing as we just go around doing normal things
Speaker 2: in life, most of them on the Internet.
Speaker 1: Yes, that was a very important and very early aspect
Speaker 1: of the book, and for me actually a lot of
Speaker 1: humor derives from it, kind of a dark humor, because
Speaker 1: may We'll be having what feels like a very intimate
Speaker 1: conversation with the hum, and then the hum will start
Speaker 1: trying to sell her things. So you realize, oh, the
Speaker 1: whole time we were talking, communicating, you were just trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what you wanted to sell me. So
Speaker 1: there's humor in that. But also I find that to
Speaker 1: be one of the least science fictional aspects of the book,
Speaker 1: and most realistic it's the same we're constantly getting fed
Speaker 1: targeted advertisements and May. Throughout the first half of the book,
Speaker 1: the HUM keeps on saying to her, women of a
Speaker 1: certain age, show their age in their hands. Can I
Speaker 1: sell you this lotion that will be specifically targeted to
Speaker 1: your And so in all of these serious moments, this
Speaker 1: silly ad comes into the conversation. And that's just a
Speaker 1: way of presenting and making really concrete however present advertising is,
Speaker 1: and how the technologies that surround us often have as
Speaker 1: a very central goal that targeted advertising, as we've mentioned
Speaker 1: a couple of times at the end of the book,
Speaker 1: may pays quite an exorbitant sum to turn off the
Speaker 1: hums advertising, as we are often asked to do to
Speaker 1: pay to turn off advertising in our streaming services. And
Speaker 1: at that juncture, when the HUM no longer has the
Speaker 1: advertising agenda, May and the HUM become capable of having
Speaker 1: a much deeper level of conversation, and in that there's
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit of a utopian idea of what
Speaker 1: it is like to or what it could be like
Speaker 1: to interact with AI that has no agenda except truly
Speaker 1: consolidating all of the best knowledge and wisdom and empathy
Speaker 1: of humanity and advising someone with all of that in play,
Speaker 1: with no advertising agenda.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about AI and writing, you said,
Speaker 2: you know, we still don't know whether there are ways
Speaker 2: in which AI can be used for good, but already
Speaker 2: people are using it for all sorts of things. So
Speaker 2: in February there was a New York Times profile of
Speaker 2: an author by the pseudonym Choral Heart, who has used
Speaker 2: twenty one pen names to publish more than two hundred
Speaker 2: romance novels, selling around fifty thousand copies and earning six figures.
Speaker 2: Not mainstream, it's not like it's going on the New
Speaker 2: York Times Best Salary anytime soon, but it's not unsuccessful either. Like,
Speaker 2: is this the kind of AI can be used for
Speaker 2: art that you imagined would be a useful thing to have.
Speaker 1: That's not really what I'm picturing. I suppose I would say.
Speaker 1: The way I feel about that personal with my own practice,
Speaker 1: is writing is the thing I do. It's my favorite
Speaker 1: thing to do with my brain. How incredible to have
Speaker 1: a human brain, and then how incredible to be able
Speaker 1: to use it to do this task that is for me,
Speaker 1: the most challenging task I can set my mind to,
Speaker 1: and therefore the most interesting task and the most flow
Speaker 1: state I can get into. I can't imagine outsourcing that
Speaker 1: particular thing to a machine. It's why would I give
Speaker 1: away all of that fun and all of that delight
Speaker 1: and challenge. And certainly as a professor of creative writing,
Speaker 1: this is something and I was even thinking the other
Speaker 1: day preparing for the upcoming semester, we really need to
Speaker 1: talk deeply about this on the first day of class,
Speaker 1: that as our world becomes more and more automated, our
Speaker 1: own unique, idiosyncratic trains of thought and the words that
Speaker 1: we choose to put down become ever more precious and
Speaker 1: ever greater evidence of our humanity. So I am not
Speaker 1: interested in using AI in my own writing practice, and
Speaker 1: I encourage beg my students not to use it either,
Speaker 1: because I want their voices.
Speaker 2: But when they do, how do you feel?
Speaker 1: I feel like they are robbing themselves of the opportunity
Speaker 1: to learn how to think. Because writing, for me, especially
Speaker 1: when they are young writers educating themselves, it's not the
Speaker 1: final product. It's the thinking that goes into it, and
Speaker 1: the preciousness of putting your brain in a challenging situation,
Speaker 1: So I just worry. I've read some things about cognitive
Speaker 1: decline that people have when they overuse AI. Now I
Speaker 1: do talk to my students, and of course we have
Speaker 1: to be practical here. It is an amazing tool, and
Speaker 1: I'll say to them on the first day of class,
Speaker 1: I'll give them different examples. Okay, is it appropriate to
Speaker 1: use AI to write a creative piece in this class? Okay?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Is it appropriate to use AI to write a letter
Speaker 1: to the DMV challenging a parking ticket? Maybe that's fine.
Speaker 1: Probably that's fine. How one thing that they're always divided
Speaker 1: on is writing a wedding toast for your best friend.
Speaker 1: That's usually about half and half. So there are uses,
Speaker 1: but I think that for the highest kind of thinking
Speaker 1: and creativity, it is a long term disadvantage to your
Speaker 1: own brain to rely on AI.
Speaker 2: I am a little surprised about the half a knife
Speaker 2: on the wedding toast. I mean, well, really depends on
Speaker 2: how much you love your friend.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's twenty five would use it in seventy five wouldn't.
Speaker 1: But that one is a little divided sometimes.
Speaker 2: But writing is, and admittedly a very lonely exercise, and
Speaker 2: in my most frustrating parts of writing, that is the
Speaker 2: thing that stands out. And you know, you could use
Speaker 2: AI as an editor. Would that be a good use
Speaker 2: sort of give me feedback on this new piece of
Speaker 2: writing that I've done, And I could, I don't have
Speaker 2: somebody else who will have time to read it.
Speaker 1: Potentially, I haven't used it that way, but I do
Speaker 1: know I have spoken to former students who have done
Speaker 1: that after they leave the academic context, they don't have
Speaker 1: someone to read their work. And I feel like, as
Speaker 1: with any feedback you ever get, even if it is
Speaker 1: in a creative writing class with humans, you're always going
Speaker 1: to take it with a grain of salt. So if
Speaker 1: you receive editing advice and fifty percent of it is
Speaker 1: helpful and useful and fifty percent of it is useless,
Speaker 1: that's fine. So I again, as I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not anti tech, it's just how do we use
Speaker 1: it so that it's a remedy and not a poison?
Speaker 2: How do you balance tech in your own life as
Speaker 2: a writer, You know, focuses something that really is necessary,
Speaker 2: but tech is also useful and distracting.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think that this question in my life as
Speaker 1: a writer, when I am actually in the active process
Speaker 1: of writing, I put on a timer and I go
Speaker 1: into literal focus mode in word and I don't look
Speaker 1: at the internet. Occasionally, if there's an extremely specific question
Speaker 1: I have, like about the color of a certain animal,
Speaker 1: I might quickly look that up, but I am really
Speaker 1: in the habit as long as the timers on the
Speaker 1: Internet is pretty much off. But I feel like this
Speaker 1: question is more relevant actually to being a parent and
Speaker 1: figuring out how to dose the technologies that my children
Speaker 1: are exposed to. And it was quite interesting and fairly
Speaker 1: ironic that right as I was finishing up home, my
Speaker 1: ten year old daughter said that she wanted to start
Speaker 1: to walk to school by herself, that she felt ready
Speaker 1: to do that, and I love that independence. But we
Speaker 1: live a mile from her school and it's in I
Speaker 1: live in New York City, in Brooklyn, and so I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure about letting her go. But then we had
Speaker 1: the idea if she had a little watch where I
Speaker 1: could track her and call her and it would be
Speaker 1: fine for her to walk to school. And we haven't
Speaker 1: spoken about this, but in the one of the quasi
Speaker 1: villains of the book is these little bunnies, which are
Speaker 1: these watches that the children wear and which may takes
Speaker 1: off of them to go to the botanical gardens. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the tension in the book springs from
Speaker 1: the fact that the mother is constantly tracking the children.
Speaker 1: But then in my own reality of my life, it
Speaker 1: made a lot of sense and was incredibly relieving and
Speaker 1: beautiful for me and my daughter that she could walk
Speaker 1: to school and I could feel comfortable with it. So
Speaker 1: it's all complicated, but I think this balance of technology,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it all the time. Where is it
Speaker 1: a tool and where is it a detriment?
Speaker 2: And then, as a writing professor, what is your advice
Speaker 2: to budding writers want to write about climate change, either
Speaker 2: incorporating it directly into their stories or indirectly.
Speaker 1: I don't actually, though I personally as a writer have
Speaker 1: a very significant climate change interest. I don't talk to
Speaker 1: my students about that very much, but I do expose
Speaker 1: them to my favorite works about climate change where I
Speaker 1: feel like a work of fiction has been as subtle
Speaker 1: and interesting and meaningful as literature should be. So one
Speaker 1: of those stories that I love to teach is the
Speaker 1: story Exhalation by the writer Ted Chiang. It is a
Speaker 1: completely different society from anything we've ever encountered. It's these
Speaker 1: robots who live in these bodies and they have to
Speaker 1: breathe in this very particular way. And it's a beautifully
Speaker 1: executed story. And by the end you realize this robot
Speaker 1: society is in threat, and so it becomes a metaphor
Speaker 1: for climate change. But it really sneaks up on you,
Speaker 1: and that to me is very powerful and more goes deeper,
Speaker 1: gets deeper into you than a more in your face,
Speaker 1: like we need to save the climate right now. I
Speaker 1: feel like literature needs to be it's wonderful, strange, nonlinear
Speaker 1: sort of circuit as self in order to really have
Speaker 1: in order to really present climate change, because if it
Speaker 1: just sounds like a writer is on a soapbox yelling
Speaker 1: at you, you're going to shut down. First, you need
Speaker 1: to have a literary experience and an emotional experience, and
Speaker 1: then you can arrive at some deeper understanding of climate change.
Speaker 1: Another book that I put in the same category is
Speaker 1: Samanta Shweblin's book Fever Dream. It's an extraordinary probably my
Speaker 1: all time favorite book, but it ultimately is about pollution,
Speaker 1: but it really takes a while to arrive there, and
Speaker 1: you arrive there in a very interesting way. So those
Speaker 1: are two that I love to present to my students.
Speaker 2: You are the second winner of the Climate Fiction Prize,
Speaker 2: which in a way is also telling because it was
Speaker 2: only about ten years ago that Amitav Ghosh, one of
Speaker 2: the sort of climate writers who came out with a
Speaker 2: book The Great Derangement, saying how literature has failed at
Speaker 2: the task of telling people about the deep crisis that
Speaker 2: we are in, whether it's direct or indirect. And the
Speaker 2: fact that there is a Climate Fiction Prize, that there
Speaker 2: are these finalists, you know, five others who are good
Speaker 2: books to read, is a confirmation of finally literature correcting
Speaker 2: itself to try and bring the climate story in different ways.
Speaker 2: But you are a novelist, You've written multiple novels. What
Speaker 2: is it that the novel offers that other mediums like
Speaker 2: TV or film don't.
Speaker 1: I think for me, what the novel offers that's unique
Speaker 1: is just an incredible intimacy with a character's mind and
Speaker 1: train of thought and lived experience, which in film you're
Speaker 1: watching them from outside, which can be wonderful. And I
Speaker 1: love I love movies, I love TV. But the novel,
Speaker 1: you're just it's in your brain and you're in the
Speaker 1: character's brain, and there's just it's a unique level of intimacy.
Speaker 1: And so if May is feeling anxious about taking her
Speaker 1: children outside because of the air quality, and her daughter
Speaker 1: is upset about it, you're really feeling my intention, my hope,
Speaker 1: my dream is that you are feeling that feeling with
Speaker 1: her as though it is your own feeling. It becomes
Speaker 1: your own feeling. So that's for novels and short stories too.
Speaker 1: I feel that that intimacy is the greatest strength.
Speaker 2: And it is the end of July when we are
Speaker 2: recording a lot of people listening, at least in the
Speaker 2: Northern Hemisphere, are going to go on summer holidays. Are
Speaker 2: there book recommendations that you would have for people?
Speaker 1: I love this question. So one book I just read
Speaker 1: that was released recently that is about the future of
Speaker 1: life on Earth is Earth seven by dev Olen Unfirth.
Speaker 1: And another book I read this summer that I had
Speaker 1: never encountered before, although it was published in Taiwan in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, but is a very interesting climate book
Speaker 1: and technology book is The Membranes by Chi Taiwei. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: both of the books I've just recommended involve humans living
Speaker 1: on the floor of the ocean, so if that is
Speaker 1: a particular interest, I recommend those, but they're both very interesting.
Speaker 1: And then of course I will add the works I've
Speaker 1: mentioned Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin, Exhalation by Ted Cheeing,
Speaker 1: and The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells, so you'll
Speaker 1: be all set for your climate anxiety reading. But they're
Speaker 1: all joyful books in their own way too.
Speaker 2: Thank you Helen, of course, and thank you for listening
Speaker 2: to zero now for the sound of the week. That
Speaker 2: is the sound of a printing press cutting the pages
Speaker 2: of a freshly printed novel. If you like this episode,
Speaker 2: please take a moment to rate and review the show
Speaker 2: on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify. This episode was produced
Speaker 2: by Oscar boyd Our. Theme music is composed by Wonderly
Speaker 2: Special Thanks to Samrsadi, Laura Milan, Summer Maxwell, and Alissa McDonald.
Speaker 2: I'm Akshatrati back soon.