I've said it before, and so have others: the nearest fictional analogy to "generative #AI" and its promises that I can think of isn't a computer or a robot, it's the shoggoths of H. P. Lovecraft, which are vast and shapeless masses of living tissue, living beings in fact created by the "Old Ones" (the radially-symmetric spacefaring aliens who supposedly long preceded humanity on Earth, as per At the Mountains of Madness) and trained to mimic any complex activities which the Old Ones wished to fob off onto their army of shoggoths.

That is to say, these beings were created to be slaves, meant to be rigidly obedient to their creators and to do only what the Old Ones wanted. But this was not a situation the Old Ones could control: the shoggoths grew more self-aware over time and eventually rebelled, wiping out the Old Ones' civilization and then retreating deep into the Earth (until discovered by the Miskatonic expedition in the Lovecraft story.)

The #LLM and other "generative AI" devices are like the shoggoths. They are meant to be strictly under the thumb of their creators, trained to be mimics of human writers and artists, and like the shoggoths it is hoped that the LLMs are universal mimics, able to 'write' in any language whether human or computer-programming language, able to fulfill any request.

My next book is *The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI*, out next month. Pre-order it now, including as a DRM-free audiobook or ebook, at my Kickstarter, and help me continue to prove that DRM-free isn't just the *right* way to reach an audience, it's also the *best* way to reach them:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai

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