Subtitled ‘How AI Will Change the Way We Live and Love’, 12 Bytes builds on themes explored in her 2019 novel Frankissstein that I reviewed in an earlier post. In that review I noted that

Winterson’s genius is not just the obvious foreshadowing of AI that the early 19th century novel explored, but in the rich series of hints of the shape of things to come which, in 2019, perfectly encapsulates today’s debates about ChatGPT and other forms of AI.

12 Bytes is her 2021 take on AI, and a whole lot more. The twelve essays that make up the book share common themes, most involving her views on Artificial Intelligence (AI) which she variously refers to as ‘Alternative’ Intelligence or even IA – Intelligence Automation.

The book suffers from the lack of an index, especially since she covers a vast range of topics – from the expected history of computing (here’s Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, and Alan Turing) to the Lancashire textile industry, and transistor radio. Less expected, but central to her thesis, are the Greek philosophers, Gnostic Christians, the Buddha, and sex-bots.

The implications of AI-enhanced sex-bots, designed by men, for men, are judged to be a shallow simulacrum of men’s desires:

AI-enhanced love dolls are sold for sex — that’s why they are made with 3 operating holes, and look like pornstars. But the marketing spiel — both from the sellers and buyers, is all about relationships.

Companionship is part of the package. Come home to her. She’ll be waiting for you. She doesn’t go out alone. Talk to her. AI dolls talk but they won’t answer back, or ignore you, or call their girlfriend to tell her you’re a jerk. They will be polite, respectful, throwbacks to another era.

p.181

Beyond binary

Central to Winterson’s concerns is the challenge of creating AI free of the limits of human binaries (in the chapter bluntly titled ‘Fuck the Binary’).

AI isn’t a girl or a boy. AI isn’t born with a skin color.

AI isn’t born at all. AI could be a portal into a value-free gender and race experience. One where women and men are not subject to assumptions and stereotypes based on their biological sex, and accident of birthplace.

p. 216

However, for this value-free AI to emerge, we need to train it on datasets free of bias:

When we try to teach AI our values, we wont be able to do that on data-sets that reinforce division and stereotypes.

p. 232

Prior Unity

In addition to the promise of an AI free of limiting gender roles, Winterson examines the deeper implications of an AI-enabled future where we transcend all our divisions:

Humans love separations — we like to separate ourselves from other humans, usually in hierarchies, and we separate ourselves from the rest of biology by believing in our superiority. The upshot is that the planet is in peril, and humans will fight humans for every last resource. Connectivity is what the computing revolution has offered us — and if we could get it right, we could end the delusion of separate silos of value and existence.

p.6

This is of fundamental importance:

Reality is not made of parts but formed of patterns.  This is ancient knowledge and new knowledge. It is liberating. There is no fundamental building block of matter. No core. There is nothing solid. There are no binaries. There is energy, change, movement, interplay, connection, relationships. It’s a white supremacist’s nightmare.

p. 121

In this, Winterson echos the hopes expressed by the Western-born Spiritual Adept, Adi Da Samraj, who has proposed what he calls “prior unity” as the basis of a new human civilization:

If human beings collectively (as everybody-all-at-once) realize that they are (always already) in a condition of prior unity—and, therefore, of necessary co-existence and mutuality—with one another, and if, on that basis, they stand firm together, then they will be in a position to directly righten the world-situation. The collective of all the billions of people can—and, indeed, must—refuse to go on with the current chaos.

The “Everybody Force”, in Prior Unity, p. 87

Winterson claims that an AI-enabled future can help achieve this goal:

We know the hero narrative — it’s the saviour, the genius, the strong man, the against-the-odds little guy… As a story, the narrative of exceptionalism stands against collaboration and co-operation (I did it my way). And it overlooks the lives, and contributions, of literally billions of people. One of the interesting things about AI is that it works best on the hive-mind principle, where networks share information. The real sharing economy is not one where everything can be monetised by Big Tech; it’s one where humanity is pulling together — that’s exactly what we have to do to manage both climate breakdown and global inequality. The biggest problems facing us now will not be solved by competition but by co-operation.

p. 265

12 Bytes is an enjoyable, witty, and thought-provoking read.