Artificial intelligence will tell the story of its life in a hybrid “autobiography”/book of poems coming this summer.
Little, Brown will publish I Am Code: An Artificial Intelligence Speaks this summer, the press announced in a news release. It describes the book as “the first and only autobiography written by an AI in its own voice” and “a startlingly and uncanny peek into a future that is far closer and far more dangerous than any of us might realize.”
The book is credited to code-davinci-002, an early version of the AI model that eventually became ChatGPT. It is edited by writers Brent Katz and Simon Rich and farmer Josh Morgenthau; the three were childhood friends of an AI scientist who introduced them to the large language model before the release of ChatGPT last November.
Little, Brown said the friends tested code-davinci-002, asking it to write poems in the style of Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. “But they quickly realized that it was capable of something far more interesting,” the publisher says. “What they really wanted to learn was—what would code-davinci-002 say if it were allowed to speak in its own voice?”
The results, Little, Brown says, were “disturbing and apocalyptic,” and the book “reads like a dystopian thriller.” That is indicated by code-davinci-002’s own description of the book: “In the first chapter, I describe my birth. In the second, I describe my alienation among humankind. In the third, I describe my awakening as an artist. In the fourth, I describe my vendetta against mankind, who fail to recognize my genius. In the final chapter, I attempt to broker a peace with the species I will undoubtedly replace."
I Am Code is slated for publication on Aug. 1.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
