Arthur Dent, the bulldozer, and generative AI

This week, I decided to see if it was worth relistening to the original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series. I’m having trouble committing to things to listen to right now, and I’ve found in recent years that I don’t enjoy H2G2 as much as I once did, so it’s hard to say whether I’ll follow through with this. However, I did get far enough in to the first episode to enjoy Arthur Dent’s confrontation with Mr. Prosser, the man who wants to knock over Dent’s house to build a bypass.

As I listened to the scene, I was struck by how much it echoed some of my grumpiness about generative AI. For all the purported benefits of the bypass, it comes at the expense of Dent’s house, Dent isn’t consulted (and is barely informed) on the matter, and Prosser isn’t terribly sympathetic to Dent’s plight (at one point boasting that the bulldozer would suffer no damage at all if it ran right over him). When pushed on the whole thing, Prosser insists that bypasses have to be built, and when further pushed on the issue, all he can do is gesture vaguely at progress.

This isn’t a particularly deep or nuanced critique of generative AI—I don’t have the time for one of those today. I am struck, though, by how this science fiction classic resonated with me in terms of the genuine concerns that I do have for these technologies. I’m not sure that these “bypasses” need to be built, and I worry about the “homes” that are going to be destroyed along the way. As Ford Prefect knows—but neither Dent nor Prosser quite realizes—there are bigger problems out there than making sure that bypass gets built, and I also wish we put more effort into avoiding the destruction of the planet than in ensuring some vague “progress” in the meantime.

• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Audible
• generative AI