Lumen Wirltuti:Warltati 2025 - Flipbook - Page 25
in the Turing Test, surely. It’s the future high
distinction passes we must be wary about.
I’ve mostly been a techno-optimist,
confident that the future will be better
and brighter despite the odd step back; a
progressive in the sense that since the
Enlightenment, and the rise of its precocious
twins, Science and Democracy, human welfare
has improved miraculously (if erratically, given
that most technological breakthroughs ambush
us with unpredicted side effects, often serious).
But AI? I’m not so sure. The optimism or
the pessimism first? Another important book
that was published in 2018, Steven Pinker’s
Enlightenment Now, documents the
miraculous improvement in human well-being,
especially in the past 50 years, on every front
– poverty, infant mortality, longevity, GDP,
income inequality, death by violence. Despite
some recent reversals – we must always be
vigilant – there has never been a period in
human history even remotely comparable,
yet – he points out – most people believe
the exact opposite.
Apocalyptic daydreaming also seems
hardwired into our brains, or part of the
religious grammar hardwired into our brains.
The End of the World is Nigh, Repent
your Sins.
Will AI enslave us or liberate us? It’s already
bringing enormous benefits, and not only for
students who cheat in exams. One close to my
heart, or at least my faulty bone marrow:
picking molecular winners that prove useful
in chemotherapy. There are countless others.
Time will tell, along with plenty of
arguments along the way, before the unsettling
future of AI becomes the past. The future will
never fail to ambush us.
Meanwhile, what a century to live in. What a
decade for a daydream!
This essay is an original work created for Lumen
by Adjunct Professor Peter Goldsworthy AM. The
accompanying poem is from his recent memoir, The
Cancer Finishing School, which is a bittersweet
exploration of how he is choosing to live life after
his diagnosis with an incurable cancer.
Peter is a medical practitioner and a multiaward-winning novelist, short story writer, poet,
screenwriter, playwright and librettist. He
graduated with an MBBS (1975) from the
University. A former Chair of the Literature Board
of the Australia Council, and Chair of the State
Library, he was appointed a Member of the
Order of Australia in 2010 for his service to
literature as an author and poet, through arts
administration, and to the community. He was
appointed an Adjunct Professor in Creative
Writing at the University in 2011 and was
awarded an Honorary Doctor of Arts in 2021.
“I'VE SPENT A FAIR PORTION OF MY LIFE
PLEASANTLY DAYDREAMING, OFTEN WITH
PEN IN HAND, BEGINNING WITH HALF A
DOZEN SCIENCE FICTION 'NOVELS' I WROTE
WHEN I WAS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL. BACK
THEN, I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO MARS,
AT LEAST BEFORE I FINISHED HIGH SCHOOL.
I'M STILL WAITING.”
Photo of Peter, at home, by Isaac Freeman,
photographic editor of Lumen.
LUMEN
