Making Creator Headlines · Page 5
The Machine Takeover Still Requires a Manuscript
· New York time
Halo and Destiny co-creator Jason Jones wrote a novel about AI taking over the world and sought author Margaret Stohl's opinion on a manuscript in 2019. The two had worked together at Bungie, giving this fictional takeover a distinctly human first checkpoint: somebody trusted had to read the draft. Moving between games and prose raises a craft challenge. A novel must guide attention through language, while games can distribute storytelling across systems, spaces and player decisions. Experience in one medium can supply ideas without eliminating the demands of another. The comic tension is irresistible: even a story about machines assuming control must pass through the extremely human activity of asking whether the manuscript works. Humanity may lose command of infrastructure, but apparently it retains notes on the second act. AI takeover fiction gives abstract concerns a sequence of choices and consequences. Its appeal depends on the story, not simply the topical noun attached to the premise. Characters must keep an audience engaged after the concept has opened the door. Even the most ambitious artificial intelligence cannot make people care merely by announcing that it has excellent processing capacity. That is a specification sheet, not yet a protagonist.
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