What out of the Machine?

Quid ex Machina, Prelude. Theme scene by Charlie Chaplin.

This is the Prelude part of the series Quid ex Machina, which examines the deep, under-explored, and Unseen impact of AI on humans and our societies. This is not yet-another-hot-take-on-chatGPT. In Act I of next Friday, we will see what the legal battles on AI and copyright are really about.

Today’s theme scene is supplied by Charlie Chaplin, from his classic comedy Modern Times.

---

I used to roll my eyes at convenient plot resolutions. British troops save Indiana Jones at a cliffhanger? Boring. Ewoks attack the empire just in time to rescue Leia and Han? Dull. Riders of Rohan arrive at dawn to defeat the evil Saruman? Tolkien must have run out of ideas.  

Now that I'm older and less stupid, I appreciate such deus ex machina moments more. Seemingly divine in nature, these improbable last-minute solutions in fiction are antidotes to our hard-knock real lives. After all, in thorny moments, no genie or god has ever jumped out of a lamp or a machine to help us.  

Or so it seems. 

Judging by Twitter trends and media headlines, we could sense that a god is coming out of our computing machines. This new god is artificial intelligence – “AI” – which, supposedly, could put an end to all of our naturally stupid troubles. Chess, Go, writing, painting, video editing, bar exams, protein folding, movement tracking, even some driving…AI could do it all. The sheer power of this new god was so awe-spiring, that some respected people started a new religion around it.

Submit to this new god, these people say, or perish into the dustbin of history. 

I reject this framing. Because there is never any god (“deus”) out of the machine (“ex machina”) to begin with. Behind every AI, there is an army of humans collecting data and developing models. Behind every role of god, there is a human actor playing that role. The ancient Greeks already knew this, since they invented deus ex machina as a theatrical practice. In last-minute dramatic conflicts, human actors were yanked onto stage to play the roles of gods. Coming out of a machine – usually a crane or a riser –  these “gods” would offer “divine” solutions to knotty human problems. 

Model of a 5th century BC crane in Greek theaters to make dramatic deus ex machina entrances. Thessaloniki Technology Museum. Source.

Yet these “divine” solutions have consequences. And such consequences often go Unseen, until many years later, when hindsight makes everything obvious. 2,500 years after the play Eumenides first used deus ex machina as a plot device, we are still dealing with the consequences of goddess Athena’s “divine” decision. In a jury trial, Athena casts the tie-breaking vote to acquit a mother-killing son – and the course of justice and society is changed forever. Justice has since progressed from private vendetta to public legal proceedings, and society drifted to set stage for patriarchy. 

Did anyone at the first performance of Eumenides foresee the depth, breadth, and longevity of Athena’s “divine” solutions? I doubt it. 

But I can imagine the ancient crowd of theater-goers wondering why a crane was installed near the stage. They had never seen a crane in theaters before. They probably didn’t expect Athena’s actor to spring out of the crane, but I’m sure they asked themselves: what will come out of this crane machine?

A scene from Eumenides: Athena dismissing the vengeful Furies. 1795, after John Flaxman. Source

This is exactly our situation: we are the audience at the first performance of a play about human civilization, and AI is the newly installed crane in the theater. The crane is making random movements around the stage, and we can’t discern exactly what the crane is carrying. But we know for certain that no god will come out of the crane to make everything on stage a happy-ever-after.

So, like every curious soul, as the AI machine moves around the stage of human society, we are asking:

Quid ex Machina? What out of the machine?

This is what we’ll focus on in this series. Next up in Act I: what the legal battles on AI and copyright are really about.

Thank you for reading Earthly Fortunes. If you like it, please share it. Subscribe for free to hear more about the Unseen implications of AI.

---

I’d love to hear your thoughts about AI and human society! Let me know in the comments, DM me on Twitter or Instagram, or just reply to the email!