A: Both narratives are dealing with languages–coding, English, Tamil–and the limits of translation and the failures of it. The protagonist is training an AI model that ends up interpreting data in unexpected ways, and begins even responding beyond what it’s being fed. There’s much unknowability in this process. Similarly, the protagonist is also translating a text, and her translation would always be imperfect. In both projects, she is doing something without a clear understanding of why. Even though the AI project is her job, she doesn’t know what its true purpose is. Translating a relatively obscure manuscript has certainly no financial incentives, but there’s this urge for her to do it that is probably more enigmatic.

A: I like how you compared the poetry as a kind of ‘captcha.’ I think we think there’s something intrinsically soulful to poetry, like it can only be created by a human. This is challenged by AI-generated art, so I wanted these things to be in conversation. As we see, an AI can arrange words in an affecting and lyrical way. Poetry is succinct. Someone can be moved by five words. When I think of AI-generated poetry, it still has a human touch because it’s being trained by existing poetry. I’m also wondering what does it mean when people say things like “our shared humanity.” Humanity is not shared equally. Some people’s humanity is often overlooked. In the novel, there’s a houseless character that becomes very vital, and in the manuscript, there are refugees escaping a war. In the terms of AI, I talk about narrow AIs being very specialized in certain tasks, but how general AI struggles to exceed the capabilities of a toddler. I’m asking what is intrinsically human?

A: I’m mostly excited by models like ChatGPT. It feels wild what it’s capable of doing, and I know there’s also probably dread hidden somewhere in there too. Universities are fearful of students having ChatGPT write their essays for them. My friend asked ChatGPT to create a syllabus about literature and the Arab Gulf and it plagiarized her own syllabus. I find these interactions energizing though, of course, I still feel existential doom and feel more and more useless as a human.

A: I think Sal is a composite of many different kinds of visual artists I’ve been around. She’s a struggling artist, who happens to become famous because of the AI-related death of her parents. In trying to bring awareness to what happened, she is also accused of commodifying her pain for public consumption. Many artists are navigating this relationship between art and commerce. I went to an exhibit that was funded by Facebook and used VR. This VR projection of the artist asked the audience how they could try to alleviate the effects of capitalism, etc. It was really strange because the exhibit cost $25 to enter, and, on top of that, it was funded by a Facebook. It made me wonder how you critique something at the same time as you are participating in it? Of course, artists are scrambling for funding to make a living, to make their art.

A: I didn’t anticipate the book would cover so much ground, including CRISPR and quantum entanglement. But I really let the book lead me to unexpected places, and I’m very interested in reading about developments in science and technology. Also, I would highly recommend Melanie Mitchell’s book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. I’m someone who reads very widely and consumes many different kinds of media. For me, the plot in the novel worked in a very quantum way. It wasn’t your usual Newtonian, cause-and-effect plot.