PROMPT: Searched for Online

Daily writing prompt
What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

I ask AI what kind of economic system can work when machines / AI do virtually all productive tasks better than humans — such that humans can no longer sell their labor for money to buy goods and other services. (i.e. the backbone of economies as we’ve known them.) I ask because it’s an extremely important question whose answer is completely without precedent. Those who say it’ll be like a new, bigger, better Industrial Revolution are full of shit. It was not hard to imagine the work domain left to humans during the Industrial Revolution- unless you were a proper Luddite. When we hit the aforementioned inflection point, however distant it may or may not be, it will be an entirely different matter.

It’s a little like asking a real estate developer what will happen to you and your neighbors when they tear down your subdivision to build a golf course, but the AI is a little less defensive. When the AI is equally defensive, we’ll know we’re screwed.

PROMPT: TV Shows

Daily writing prompt
What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

Andy Griffith Show, Carol Burnett Show, Dick Van Dyke Show… wow, they were not creative with names in those days.

PROMPT: Favorite Time

Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite time of day?

When all is quiet and harmonious, and one anticipates good things are to come.

PROMPT: Recipe

Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite recipe?

Flour, water, salt, and yeast. The epitome of simplicity.

PROMPT: Excited

Daily writing prompt
Tell us about the last thing you got excited about.

Being able to read Chinese, even if is dumbed-down stories for beginners and I still have to look words up every few sentences. But it feels like I’ve stumbled upon a door to a whole new universe.

PROMPT: Cities

Daily writing prompt
How would you design the city of the future?

I suspect cities are on the way to becoming passé. They worked great for an economy built around humans exchanging time and effort for a salary, but in an economy in which machines do virtually all productive tasks better, faster, and more efficiently than humans, the benefits seem less clear.

Plus, there’s a lot of discussion of an epidemic of loneliness, and so it seems — as a basic organizational structure — cities (admittedly ironically) don’t serve humanity well. People are adapted for families and tribes — more close-knit communities.

Furthermore, Asia is already beginning to see the problem of downward scalability of cities, as many cities shrink less elegantly than they grew. Birth rates are declining everywhere as humanity reaches its upper limit for this planet.

Maybe the future is artist colonies.

PROMPT: Name

Daily writing prompt
Where did your name come from?

I wasn’t consulted on the matter. Like most, I labor under the impression that it came from my parents, but for all I know it was just a random person off the streets who scribbled it on the clipboard hanging off the hospital bassinet. If there even was a hospital…

PROMPT: Motivates

Daily writing prompt
What motivates you?

When tigers chase, I run. When sunsets glow, I sit and watch.

PROMPT: Movies

Daily writing prompt
What are your top ten favorite movies?

No particular order: Kung Fu Hustle, Caddyshack, Matrix, Inception, John Wick 4, Airplane, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Blazing Saddles, Hero, and Drunken Master II.

PROMPT: Writing

Daily writing prompt
What do you enjoy most about writing?

EPIPHANIES.

But, if you think about it, writing is miraculous. In the scheme of gifts that nature grants, it is way out beyond left field. Encoding ideas and images in simple characters in a way that can evoke emotional or cognitive responses in readers is kind of a superpower. (As is reading.)