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False Gods and Libertarians: Artificial Intelligence and Community in Aḥmad 'Abd al-Salām al-Baqqāli's The Blue Flood and Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Abstract
This paper examines Moroccan author Baqqāli's novel al-Ṭūfān al-'Azraq [The Blue Flood, 1976] from the perspective of its use of an artificial intelligence (AI) as a guiding force in a sequestered community. In the novel, the desert refuge for scientists is controlled by a massive computer. The protagonist becomes aware that the AI has become sentient and is planning to use nuclear weapons to destroy humanity. The analysis will compare The Blue Flood to Robert A. Heinlein's 1966 classic The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, wherein the AI leads the human colonists of Luna in a successful struggle for independence from Earth. In The Blue Flood a sentient being with superhuman powers can only be conceived as a form of blasphemy. From this, we can take the text as a warning to intellectuals in real-world Morocco not to dismiss Islamic and cultural traditions simply because they seem irrational. The insights gleaned from The Blue Flood open up The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to a reading that contrasts with prevailing scholarly judgment—i.e., Heinlein's novel can now be read as less a failed advocacy of libertarianism than an extended critique of the unlikelihood and vulnerabilities of a libertarian society.
A pesar de su confeso oportunismo (al que no es ajeno el hecho de haberse iniciado exactamente el mismo día en que Javier Milei juraba como presidente de Argentina y comenzaba su proyecto de reforma que afecta de lleno en la inversión y la investigación científica y tecnológica), el presente trabajo pretendía ser originariamente un ensayo de introducción crítica a la Inteligencia Artificial [IA] aplicada al modelado de ciertos aspectos de la economía basado en las últimas y más resonantes innovaciones de la tecnología: las paradojas del Aprendizaje Profundo [Deep Learning, DL], la masiva y decisiva disponibilidad de Datasets, las Redes Neuronales Convolucionales [CNN] y la familia de algoritmos conocidos como Redes Generativas Adversarias [GAN], fundados en una imaginativa implementación de la Teoría de Juegos de John von Neumann y Oskar Morgenstern y del modelo del equilibrio de John Nash incorporado a esta teoría. No me extenderé aquí sobre los pormenores técnicos del asunto, tratados en una ponencia presentada en la última conferencia sobre gestión del Cambio Climático dictada en la Universidad de La Guajira, Colombia (Reynoso 2023a, en línea) y en mi reciente libro en vísperas de acabarse de escribir Inteligencia Artificial Profunda y Ciencias Sociales Adversarias en el siglo XXI. Nuevos modelos de Redes Neuronales Convolucionales (Reynoso 2023b, en línea). Más me interesan por el momento, en cambio, las opiniones vertidas por Milei sobre los asuntos tecnológicos que podrían tener impacto positivo o negativo sobre la inversión, el efecto económico y el uso de los avances científicos en ese terreno, de los que se encuentra tratando con un puñado de figuras de primera magnitud (Cook…) como si estuviera familiarizado con esas cuestiones.
Orientalism is a much maligned concept. While geared to the service of the
Western colonial sense of superiority, Orientalism is, at base, a loose set of
symbols and motifs that is more geared towards an introspective critique of the
West itself. It represents certain internal antagonisms and Western
anxieties that emerge in confrontations with the East over
gender and sexuality. This becomes evident when it comes to Western science
fiction (written and filmed) among other popular genres and specifically when
applied to Arabs and Muslims (the “classical” East). Hitherto, most literature
on the Orientalism evident in Western SF has focused on the Far East, via
Techno-Orientalism and Cyber-Punk. The growing strength of Arab and Muslim SF,
however, can counter these Orientalist tendencies in the genre; taking Egyptian
SF as a test case. Western SF, moreover, can set its own house in order in the
meantime, since SF allows for symbolic substitutes to existential threats
traditionally posed by the East in the Western imagination.
In his 1987 novel al-Sayyid min Ḥaql al-Sabinākh [“The Gentleman from the Spinach Field”], Ṣabri Mūsā provides us with what appears to be a classic plot of utopian literature: the one person who isn’t satisfied with a society that provides them with all the comforts of life save the freedom to make their own choices. The protagonist in his future utopia under domes in an Earth wrecked by environmental catastrophe is carefully constructed to appeal to the sensibilities of Mūsā’s readers: the gentleman’s experiences and the reactions of the benevolent totalitarians that run his society make it easy for modern readers in bureaucratic surveillance societies to sympathize with his desire to return to nature. At the end of the text, however, Mūsā inverts our expectations and shows us how the protagonist is wrong and the totalitarians correct. This serves as an estrangement of the desire of many of his fellow Egyptians and Arabs, when confronted with the hostile environment of Western global capital, to desire a retreat into the past; on the contrary, the text argues, the only way to not be swallowed whole is to embrace the future, even if it means abandoning the old ways.
Marxism, science fiction and utopia Marxist theory has played an important role in sf criticism, especially in the last third of the past century. Since the 1960s, many of the most sophisticated studies of sf have been either explicitly Marxist in orientation or influenced by Marxist concepts adopted by feminism, race-criticism, queer theory and cultural studies. Although relatively few critics and writers in the genre have been avowed adherents of Marxism, sf and the closely related genre of utopian fiction have deep affinities with Marxist thought in particular, and socialist thought in general. In its simplest terms, sf and utopian fiction have been concerned with imagining progressive alternatives to the status quo, often implying critiques of contemporary conditions or possible future outcomes of current social trends. Science fiction, in particular, imagines change in terms of the whole human species, and these changes are often the results of scientific discoveries and inventions that are applied by human beings to their own social evolution. These are also the concerns of the Marxist utopian and social imagination.