Monday, July 22, 2013

Preston's statement

The biggest difference between present artificial intelligence and the
human brain is that humans forget. Everything we don't manage to
forget, everything we think we know about ourselves, is held together
thanks to a narrative glue. By tapping into this glue and telling
communal stories, people can form communities. But not all stories are
equal and not all 'communities' are good. Many stories abuse this
trait of the human mind and succeed in clouding up the truest
experience of the world (such as the story that money given to the top
1% will trickle down to the rest of the economy or all of
advertising). Given the slightest opportunity, divisive and
corporate-fueled stories will clog up our mental inboxes day in and
day out, forever. It has been the task of the worlds's greatest
writers to speak truth to power and to clear the air so that we can
reassess--at least for a moment--what matters and what should be
filtered out. The great hope is that strong true narratives are
remembered, and that weak ones die out. As I see it then, my job (most
broadly stated) is to humbly craft true stories that encourage the
healthy forgetting and re-imagining of a united world.