Originally published on LinkedIn.
Your feed is full of AI posts. Here’s a zombie story instead.
I wrote this flash fiction in 2017, before I’d heard of GPT‑anything. The zombie apocalypse as I imagined it: people stumbling around, entranced by their touchscreen devices. “Brains?”
Thinking machines seemed to make people stop thinking.
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The Oracle, by Steve Breitenbach
I can read. Barely. I am the Reader of my tribe, the Literata. The old Literata told me about the word itself, “Literata,” a long story about dead languages and neologism. I do not remember all of it. She did not write it down. The Clouds will know, if I find the right way to ask.
The Clouds know everything. When to sow, when to reap, herbs that can treat the sickness – the Clouds know. The touchscreens cannot answer every question. My brothers and sisters wander through the village, tracing their fingers on the touchscreens. They spend their nights in the waking dream, after long hours in the fields have ended.
The Clouds can speak only through the Literata, because the Clouds do not speak.
I crack my knuckles. My teacher did this, before she consulted the Clouds. I do it to honor her memory. Wiggling my fingers, I sit down at the keyboard and prepare my query to explore the Data.
There is still one question the ancient data store cannot answer: which of the young will put down her screen and be the next Reader?
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When I build LLM systems, I ask, “How will this engage the user to think better?”
The second L in LLM says that the written word isn’t dead quite yet.
Watch out for zombies! 😉