An interesting and strident talk last night from academic AI critic Teresa Heffernan at the wonderfully zeitgeisty Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Heidelburg:

Veterans of AI discourse may not find much that’s new to them in here, but I found her points regarding the necessity of maintaining and reinforcing the distinction between science fiction (which is to say sf-that-is-presented-as-fiction, and which must be read as such) and science fact; Heffernan is particularly exercised by the credulous and boostery material on AI that e.g. MIT Tech Review was cranking out through the early Twentyteens, but also mentions the transhumanoids as an overlapping and equally crafty scene, adept at controlling the narrative and peddling sfnal concepts which simply aren’t backed by any actual science.

This blurring of the lines between fiction and fact, she argues, does a disservice to both sf as literature, and to genuine scientific research, much of which debunks the techno-utopian promises of Thort Lords who (despite their donning of its mantle) aren’t even real computer scientists, but rather C-suite hucksters with a particular aptitude for investor storytime as optimised for others of their generation who grew up reading sf but lack the critical or empathetic reading skills to parse metaphor as metaphor rather than prophecy or blueprint.

(This, not incidentally, is why the sudden landrush on “science fiction prototyping” in the commercial futures scene is worrying; this is not the case for every practitioner, of course, but the original iteration of it is deeply uncritical, little more than a way of putting a futuristic gloss on some product concept that usually doesn’t require the tropes with which it is garnished, and may in fact be done a disservice by them.)

What I take from Heffernan, if only by implication, is that we should not only continue to read sf-as-sf through critical lenses, but also read the pseudo-scientific fictions-presented-as-fact as if they were fictions. That doing so seems to irk the Thort Lords so thoroughly is only one reason to recommend it.