The Future is Already Here

The great English writer Terry Pratchett once wrote an article on the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on fantasy writing:

“J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.”

- Terry Pratchett, Magical Kingdoms, July 4th 1999

You may be wondering why I am sharing this quote in an article about modern technology that feels like science fiction.

Well, I believe that this quote perfectly encapsulates my conundrum. The answer to this article is obvious.

Artificial Intelligence.

It fits the question perfectly. It is modern technology; it is influencing my life - whether I want it to or not- and it feels like science fiction.

But it is clearly too obvious an answer for me to give if I want to stand out.

I'm sure that there will be many articles on this website that try to answer this question differently, like those Japanese artists who purposefully didn't include Mount Fuji in their art.

But anyone answering this question honestly must immediately think of AI.

Of course, I am speaking as a 38-year-old man, so what constitutes science fiction for me may differ from that of a 72-year-old or a 17-year-old.

Anyone who has read science fiction from the 1950s will know what I mean. Writers were influenced by the limitations of their current technology when imagining the future, which is why so many stories had flying cars and pill-shaped meals, but very few had the KFC Double-Down burger.

When I was a child, my hopes for futuristic technology were:

• Flying cars

• Immortality

• Real Estate on the Moon

• Robots

As I grew older, these desires changed slightly, reflecting more realistic ambitions and my changing priorities.

At 17, I'd have been willing to trade flying cars, immortality, and moon mansions for a robot girlfriend.

Hell, at 27, I'd still have been interested. Which would have been a crushing blow to my wife.

But my official hopes would have been:

• Automated cars

• Portals

• Weight loss drugs / legal steroids

• Robots

As you can see, a lot of my dreams from 10 years ago have come true. Sure, portals are still firmly science fiction, and that may be for the best, but the others all exist in one form or another.

Automated cars are very real, and could well be in Nottingham by the end of the decade. And the moment it becomes possible to use one, I'm giving it a go.

No automated car could possibly endanger my life more than my own driving!

Weight loss drugs (appetite suppressants) also already exist, even if I don't really need them, and couldn't afford to pay for them without the NHS.

Legal steroids don't exist, but surely they'll be the next major pharmaceutical breakthrough. SARMs are already heavily used by gym goers, and the large number of people who experience rapid weight loss from drugs such as Mounjaro will spur further research into this area.

So, the only modern technology that both exists and is easily accessible for me to use is artificial intelligence.

Now, I'm not here to debate the positives and negatives of using AI, and as a writer who has lost a lot of work to AI over the years, I am no evangelist for ChatGPT or Gemini.

But the question is "What technology in my daily life already feels like science fiction?" and this is my answer.

It's in everything. It's in the stock market, it's in cars, it's obviously on my phone and my desktop computer. I talk to AI chatbots when I have an issue with my car insurance (hence the need for automated cars).

And, to me, it feels like I have my own personal army of robots.

ChatGPT could have written this whole article for me in 10 seconds if I'd asked it to. It wouldn't have charged me a penny, and the article would probably have had fewer grammatical errors!

If you'd told me as a small child in the 90s that one day I could type my homework assignment into a computer and the computer would do my homework for me, I would have needed a stiff drink and a comfortable chair (the 90s were a different time).

A lot of people dismiss AI as a glorified search engine. I would firstly argue that search engines themselves would have felt pretty damn futuristic in the 90s, so that's a silly criticism.

But I don't think that you can really compare the two. Type something into Google that it doesn't understand, and you need to think of a way of rephrasing the question.

With AI, you can build a partnership. Expand your question; use regular speech. You can even talk to it using voice recording technology.

It remembers what you say, even months later, and you can see that it begins to improve its answers the more it knows about how the topic relates to you as a person.

ChatGPT could probably give me a scarily accurate representation of who I am based on my most recent questions:

• "Blind beggar pub history"

• "Insect bites and reactions, Nottingham UK"

• "Quick meal ideas with the following ingredients ...."

• "What is List A cricket?"

To a search engine, these are just random questions. To an AI search engine, this is Matt, the freelance writer from Nottingham who can cook a passable Anchovy and parmesan pasta, and has a decent but not extensive knowledge of cricket.

Even as a kid, I never imagined a robot would know this stuff about me. So in a way, AI has surpassed my expectations.

I know how I'm supposed to feel about this. I know that I should look down my nose at this technology and worry about what it means for society at large. But right now, I've got a large bowl of pasta to eat that my little robot assistant helped me cook, and that's pretty damn cool.