Teresa Heffernan, Limitless Profit, AI, & the Immortality Industry

Teresa Heffernan, Fiction Writes Back: “Limitless Profit,” Artificial Intelligence, and the Immortality Industry

This talk begins with an investigation of the far reaches of the multi-billion-dollar immortality/AI industry and the money and power behind the scenes that fuels fantasy science as the planet teeters on the brink of collapse. It considers contemporary fictions that have, in turn, challenged the tech industry and its use of fiction to market this science, exposing its ideological underpinnings and its paradoxical escalation of the end of all life even as it hankers after immortality. While the tech industry is relentlessly focused on a future that is always “future” and never part of a past, I consider its archaeology by unearthing the future’s archaic longings: one of the oldest and longest surviving stories in the world, The Epic of Gilgamesh, is about a tyrannical king who wants immortality. In failing in his quest, however, Gilgamesh learns what it means to live as an ethical human being. Drawing on the lesson in this ancient epic, the talk concludes with a reflection on the connection between mortality, responsibility, and freedom. Exposing the branding of fiction as science by the AI/immortality industry, reclaiming the potential of fiction to cultivate an ethical imagination, and restoring the importance of death to life are important steps, this talk argues, in halting the catastrophic decline of the planet.

Optional preparation:

Rushkoff, Douglas. “Survival of the Richest”. Medium.com (2018).

Black Mirror. “Be Right Back”. Series 2, Episode 1. Directed by Own Harris. Written by Charlie Brooker. Channel 4. February 11 2013.

2045 Initiative Website (http://2045.com/).