At The Spectator, Bill Kauffman discusses the use of artificial intelligence for reading audiobooks and how he objects to the uneven, imprecise wording used by the computer. He suggests reliance on AI is leading the world to a dystopian future. He writes:

I’m constitutionally incapable of listening to books on tape – the mind wanders – but I am told that, with grim ineluctability, AI voices are replacing those of our living, breathing brothers and sisters who make money as voice actors. Cheapskate publishers are selling out the human race by refusing to hire actors to narrate their books or newspaper and magazine articles. AI’s mispronunciations, misplaced emphases and creepy inflections add to the chilling artificiality of the whole thing.

It’s like when the niece tells Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers that the pod-people version of her Uncle Ira isn’t Uncle Ira. “There’s something missing,” she says. “Always when he talked to me there was a special look in his eye. That look’s gone. The words, the gestures, everything else is the same – but not the feeling.”

This is the dystopian future the soul-killing AI corporations have planned for us – aided and abetted by a Trump administration that aims to clearcut federalist obstacles to a nationalized, one-size-fits-all AI regime.

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