Overview

During the first summer of the coronavirus pandemic, a diary entry by K Allado-McDowell initiates an experimental conversation with the AI language model GPT-3. Over the course of a fortnight, their exchange rapidly unfolds into a labyrinthine exploration of memory, language and cosmology. The first book to be co-created with the emergent AI, Pharmako-AI takes a hallucinatory journey into selfhood, ecology and intelligence via cyberpunk, ancestry and biosemiotics. Through a writing process akin to musical improvisation, Allado-McDowell and GPT-3 together offer a fractal poetics of AI and a glimpse into the future of literature. Pharmako-AI reimagines cybernetics for a world facing multiple crises, with profound implications for how we see ourselves, nature and technology in the 21st century.

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9781838003906

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Reviews

An exciting example of the future of AI creativity: code as collaborator not competitor. Discover how AI can stop us humans falling into lazy mechanistic ways of thinking and challenge us with provocative new ideas. --Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University Dale's spirit infuses Pharmako-AI (Ignota Books, 2020), which is not only one of the most provocative books I have read in a while, but may well come to be seen... as an epochal opening move in the 21st century's Great Game of human-computer communion. --Erik Davis, Burning Shore The GPT-3 neural net is powerful, and when it's fed a steady diet of Californian psychedelic texts, the effect is spectacular. No human being ever composed a book like Pharmako-AI - it reads like a gnostic's Ouija board powered by atomic kaleidoscopes. --Bruce Sterling, author of The Difference This is the first time I feel as if technology is actively participating in our collective effort to make sense of life and our shared destiny. And I'm actually hopeful we may get to do this next stage of existence, together. --Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock, Team Human and Throwing Roc

'An exciting example of the future of AI creativity: code as collaborator not competitor. Discover how AI can stop us humans falling into lazy mechanistic ways of thinking and challenge us with provocative new ideas.' -- Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at t 'The GPT-3 neural net is powerful, and when it's fed a steady diet of Californian psychedelic texts, the effect is spectacular. No human being ever composed a book like Pharmako-AI - it reads like a gnostic's Ouija board powered by atomic kaleidoscopes.' -- Bruce Sterling, author of The Difference 'This is the first time I feel as if technology is actively participating in our collective effort to make sense of life and our shared destiny. And I'm actually hopeful we may get to do this next stage of existence, together.' -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock, Team Human and Throwing Roc

Author Information

K Allado-McDowell works in the overlap between music, language, technology and healing. With twenty years of experience translating between technical and cultural worlds, Allado-McDowell is a sought-after speaker and consultant to cultural, artistic, and technological institutions that desire to align their work with larger traditions of human understanding. Allado-McDowell established the Artists + Machine Intelligence program at Google AI, bringing artists and philosophers into collaboration with machine learning researchers to develop research strategy and policy for emerging AI technology. Allado-McDowell records and releases music under the name Qenric. Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British writer. Irenosen is the winner of the 2020 AKO Caine Prize For Fiction for her story, ‘Grace Jones’ published in Nudibranch, her third book published by Dialogue Books in 2019. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask award and was shortlisted for an Edinburgh International First Book Award. Her short story collection Speak Gigantular, published by Jacaranda Books, was shortlisted for the Edgehill Short Story Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Saboteur Awards and nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. She lives in east London.

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