Literature mirrors the general culture. There has been a recent explosion of books in which AI is the central plot device moving the narrative forward to endings that range from a utopian fulfillment of human destiny to the catastrophic collapse of civilization and the annihilation of humankind. But AI infiltrated the literary space several decades ago. Philip Dick imagined a world in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? where cyborgs were being hunted down because of fear that they might take over the world. In 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, a robot named Hal murders nearly all the crew of a spaceship on a planetary mission because of a programming error. 

Speak by Louisa Hall is more recent addition to the AI library. But it was published several years before large language models became a routine tool to plan a vacation or write a letter of recommendation. Is it still worth reading in 2025? 

The novel is a composite narrative centered around five interwoven stories spanning the time period from 1663 to 2040. In the first narrative, a young Puritan girl who finds herself in an unwanted marriage, records her thoughts in a diary that she is writing on a treacherous ocean voyage to America. Fast forward to the 20^th century and we meet Alan Turing who is writing letters to the mother of young man to whom he was emotionally attached and who died prematurely. He is troubled by his inability at times to communicate with people. A decade later we meet Karl and Ruth Dettman, a couple whose families escaped Nazi Germany but under vastly different circumstances. The husband, Karl, is a computer scientist who has developed a program named MARY to enable computers to interact with humans. Ruth, his wife, is a historian who has built a career centered on the publication of old diaries like the one written by the young woman traveling to America. She is trying to convince Karl to expand the memory of his computer program and enrich it with more human material, but Karl stubbornly refuses because he is concerned about the power of his program to overwhelm its users if its database is expanded. Finally, we jump ahead to 2040, and we read the transcripts of the trial of Stephen Chinn, a man who is being prosecuted for the production of robots that are too life-like. Chinn is being accused of causing physical and psychological harm to the people who have used his robots and of weakening normal relationships between people. A young adolescent named Gaby, who was given a doll powered by a version of MARY, is one of his alleged victims. His own personal recollections are folded into the trial proceedings, as he tries to describe his intentions, justify his actions, and make amends for where they may have gone awry. 

Taking stock of our world today, there is clear evidence that AI can improve the day-to-day lot of people, make life more convenient and efficient, and promote better health outcomes. However, much of the current angst that permeates discussions of AI is focused on the potential economic and sociopolitical consequences. There is fear that systematic adoption of AI will lead to widespread loss of jobs and financial distress for people left behind. The generation of false data and uncontrolled dissemination of unfiltered information may, it is feared, foster social unrest and destabilize democratic institutions.  

All of these predictions, for good or for bad, center on the word “intelligence.” If it is defined as the creative use of information towards a specific goal– my definition, to be sure — then it exists along a gradient and there is not an opposing term. In that case, the mixed picture about the future of AI seems accurate. Humans can process information to both noble and destructive ends. If machines are provided information by humans, then it is likely that there will be worthy and flawed outcomes. It is not a reflection of the logical structures or neural networks that are built into us as humans or artificially placed into machines. It simply is the nature of intelligence. Information is agnostic and it can be processed in a limitless number of ways; there is no guarantee of what will happen when it is processed. 

On the other hand, if we center our predictions on the word “artificial,” there is an opposing term, namely “genuine.” Speak looks beyond AI as intelligence and forces us to think about its impact on interpersonal communication and interactions. The design of the robots that are being created in fiction and in our world of 2025 is steadily improving. The voices become more lifelike, the reactions more emotionally appropriate, the reactions more convincing. They display keen intelligence and manifest seeming empathy with their handlers. Like the artificial friend in Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishigura, the robots may even appear to have more feelings and awareness of the ever-changing psychological state of their owners than family members and friends. But it will always remain artificial. Speak forces us to ponder whether interactions between human beings have an element that cannot be programmed, that is not simply manipulation of information. It is that piece that accounts for the genuine nature of relationships between people and it is that component that is vital for human growth and maturation. The interconnected stories in Speak raise the concern that reliance on AI, in whatever embodied form it takes, to provide support and companionship may inevitably fail and leave damaged humans in its mechanical wake. The intelligence of AI may not be sufficient for humans to thrive. It remains difficult to put into words exactly what to call this additional component of human interaction. Thankfully, there is literature, and creative novels like Speak, to help us grapple with what it might be and to help us steer a course where AI is developed thoughtfully with full awareness of its limitations and potential for good and harm. 

SPEAK  
Louisa Hall 
EccoPress, New York 2016, 356 pp 
Web image by Medhum.org

These changes have not all been for the better. Perhaps you have noticed such unsettling changes yourself. A child in a restaurant is glued to a tablet screen, probably the last resort of a weary parent trying to enjoy their first peaceful meal in days. A group of tourists in Paris marvels at the Eiffel Tower, not as it is, but as it appears through their phone camera and on their phone screen. Neighborhoods have become quieter and less lively, as children have retreated from the streets and hunkered down at home with their phones. 

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the NYU Stern School of Business, elaborates upon these ideas in his book The Anxious Generation. In this book, he describes the dual trends of increasing smartphone/screen-based engagement, driven by perverse economic incentives of technology companies, and decreasing real-world, human-to-human play, driven by over-protection from modern parents. The collision of these forces has defined Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, as the most anxious and depressed generation of our time. 

In the book, Haidt notes that the tactics of technology companies to drive increased user engagement have been well documented by activists such as Tristan Harris. Much like tobacco companies in the mid to late 20^th century, modern technology companies prey on young users (e.g. children) as a source of future/recurring revenue, and fight off consumer protections through aggressive lobbying campaigns at the government level. As a result, children are spending record numbers of hours on smartphones, increasingly isolated from the real world and irritable when deprived of their digital drugs. Haidt also observes that the technology problems of girls and boys are unique. For example, girls are significantly more prone to social media addiction and the associated psychological disturbances such as distorted body image and self-worth. On the other hand, boys are much more avid users of video games and pornography, which reduce their desire for real-world play and romantic relationships. 

Haidt also notes that over a longer but overlapping time period, children have been overly protected from real-world responsibilities and real-world play. He attributes these new attitudes to the changing media landscape and how crimes are portrayed in the news, as well as legal challenges which have incentivized parental overprotection. In one example, he describes a pitiful incident in which an eight-year-old child was seen walking the streets alone, and a concerned passerby called the police to report an “abandoned child.” In this case and many others, parents have been held responsible for this absurd new “crime”, a sight which would have been entirely commonplace 30 years ago. Haidt highlights the irony of how the real-world, full of rich experiences, appropriate risk-taking, and character-building responsibilities has been overly regulated by our society, whereas the digital world, rife with dangers for growing adolescent minds, has been almost entirely unchecked, unregulated, and ignored.  

Bringing people out of the digital world and into the real world is a formidable task. One strategy that Haidt found success with was to encourage people to reconnect with a sense of awe in the world. Awe is a vague concept, but can be defined as a feeling of wonder inspired by the sacred or sublime. The real world is full of such awe-inspiring moments, if only we could stop to notice them. In a comically simple exercise, Haidt encouraged students in his university course to take a walk through Manhattan without their phones or headphones, and then to write about their experience on this “awe walk.” The written reflections were so beautiful that he included excerpts of his students’ work in the book to illustrate how such simple measures could have such a profound impact. One such excerpt is reproduced below: 

For children who have no choice but to grow up in the digital era, Haidt attempts to boil his recommendations down into four rules for a healthier childhood:  

1. No smartphones until high school. 

2. No social media before the age of 16. 

3. No phones in schools. 

4. More independence, play, and responsibility in the real world. 

He recognizes that while these solutions are simple, their implementation is anything but. As a society, we face a daunting collective action problem as it pertains to technology and real-world experiences. Such problems require collective solutions, and Haidt encourages parents to get together, organize, and raise their children together in a real-world oriented manner. While broader changes in school policy may seem out of reach, Haidt encourages struggling schools to get inspired by the numerous case studies of schools that went phone-free and experienced positive changes by almost every metric, within a matter of two to three years. 

Some may say that our society is too far gone to reverse these negative changes, but this is certainly not the case. In fact, people are more skeptical now than ever of the negative role of technology in our lives, and collective action on this problem may be easier now than it ever has been before. As we sit perched on the precipice of a new technological revolution in artificial intelligence, this sentiment has already garnered potent opposition to unchecked technological advance and implementation. Will we learn from our past mistakes? Unfortunately, our track record is not encouraging. Only time will tell how far we go before we decide we need a detox. 

The Anxious Generation 
Jonathan Haidt 
Penguin Press, New York City, March 26, 2024, 400 pages
Web Photo by Joel Fulgencio