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The Oracle and the Librarian
Spreading bitter disappointment that a "Bro Split" doesn't involve Mark Zuckerberg and a samurai sword, Google launched its ad campaign for "AI" search in the UK this week.
Along with everyone who ever read more than three thick books, the advertisement provoked that sinking feeling in me, nausea at the spectacle of humanity circling the drainpipe down to the sea of vacuous banality.
To understand why "AI" is not a technological breakthrough but an audacious political movement to redefine our relationship with computers and with truth, let's think about two characters, the Librarian and the Oracle.
You remember "The Oracle" of course. Sweet yet mysterious cookie-baking Gloria Foster of Matrix fame. If the Wachowskis left any semblance of The Greek in her it was the power of oblique divination. Like all seers and soothsayers, oracles speak in tongues, amplifying ambiguity as much as information. Like the mystic horoscope writer, the economic alarmist who correctly predicts ten out of four crises, or a stopped clock, she is assured of serendipitous correctness.
Nobody remembers the librarian. The librarian is not so much grey as transparent, with sensible shoes and a pencil skirt. As Dita Kraus or Sayuri Komachi, in fiction, their wisdom is highly tailored, to "help people find what they are looking for".