You will be astonished to learn that I have read no articles about AI. That’s because I have read all I need to about AI in fiction.
Dino Buzzati’s satiric dystopian fable, published in 1960 and translated from Italian by Anne Milano Appel, is an AI dramady, reminiscent of the satire of Gogol or Bulgakov. Buzzati satirically exposes the menace of an AI monster, created by Endriade, a modern Frankenstein. Having never recovered from the loss of his charming but unfaithful first wife, Laura, he decides to endow his giant military-funded AI computer – which appears at first to be a giant white wall – with her personality. And so he calls her Laura.
No one, not even the Department of Defense, knows what Endriade is up to, and Ermanno Ismani, a meek professor of engineering, wants no part of it. But the Ministry of Defense recruits him with an offer of a two-year job in the “top secret” military zone for a fantastic salary. His wife Elisa is eager for him to take the job.
Their trip to the military zone is high Gogolian comedy, with everyone, from highest rank to lowest, using the silly phrase, “Top Secret.” Finally the Ismanis and Olga Strobele, another scientist’s wife, are chauffeured to the site of the mountain laboratory. Olga is skeptical about the project. And she thinks that everyone is taking it much too seriously.
Olga’s husband, Stobele, informs them: “ To put it simply, this gigantic installation that so far has cost of well over ten years of effort is… it’s related to us, it’s human.”
But is it human? Or is it what Olga calls “an electronic brain”? And why do they think this burbling, humming wall is a woman?
Like a scientist in an old black-and-white movie, Endriade hopes to establish complete power over Laura, and then power over the whole world! In life he had no control over Laura, but he thinks he can control AI.
Near the end, Laura says to one of the character, “If I let you go back, he’ll invent other evil things. He wants me enslaved, he’ll tell me about the birds, he’ll keep talking about ‘love, love, love.'”
In this brilliant novel, Buzzati warns us about the future of AI. And he shows us the terrifying hubris of the scientists who develop AI. Better a power plant than an AI wall. Olga may have had the right idea.
