I’m proud to announce that “Thanks, Nostradamus,” written by yours truly, is included in the Summer 2024 edition of The Colored Lens, available now!
I first wrote this story four years ago, for a short story class with Grub Street. Then I worked with a wonderful writing group to further refine the tone and expand the plot and characters. After alternately forgetting about it and submitting it to publications that seemed like a good fit, my take on a robot apocalypse finally found a home.
It turns out I might have been sort of prescient, just like the man in the title himself. “Thanks, Nostradamus” was inspired by news of AI chatbots gone wrong. Even back in the more innocent days of 2020, big tech companies were trying to train their AI using data from the internet–often with hilarious, disturbing results. Turns out when your input’s kinda fucked, your output’s even worse. I’m glad we learned from all of that and moved on. Aren’t you?
Anyway, if something as simple as a chatbot could be corrupted, I started thinking about what an actual robot apocalypse derived from this approach to AI might look like. I knew the answer immediately: in spite of all the horror, there’d be a small kernel of total absurdity at its core.
So read my story, and next time you decide to train an AI on weird internet bullshit, think long and hard about what might happen if that same tech suddenly grew legs and arms and figured out how to interact with the world around it. Maybe that’ll smarten the AI bros up a little bit!