Paul Jukes A874036

There’s a scene from the 1960 film version of The Time Machine that has been haunting my dreams of late. In the film, the Time Traveller (Rod Taylor) has traveled almost a million years into the future, expecting that when he arrived he would find an advanced civilisation marked by the pursuit of learning. Instead, he finds the Eloi, a race of simple creatures in togas who are bred like cattle, and eaten, by the subterranean Morlocks. In the film’s most harrowing scene, he’s taken by one of the Eloi to a centuries-old library housing the last books in existence, which crumble to dust in his hands. “What have you done?” the Time Traveller demands, as the dreams of centuries turn to ash. “Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and recreating! A million years, the sensitive men dying for their dreams, for what? So you can swim, and dance, and play.” In the last couple weeks I see a lot of men on this platform arguing with a straight face that we should let AI generate our writing for us, that it’s the future, that there’s no fighting it. And I need you all to know that THIS is the ultimate end of a world in which everyone has machines write for them. There will be no more thinking, no more creative expression, no more art or literature. It’s what C. S. Lewis called “the abolition of man.” We will be no different from cattle and our libraries will turn to dust. When ease and entertainment become the highest good, it’s not shocking that people will find clever ways to avoid work and study. But nor should it be surprising when the ultimate fate of the Eloi becomes our own.