XXIV: AI and Our Collective Dreams w/ Ken Liu

This week’s guest is author, lawyer, and engineer Ken Liu— a man of many talents. You may know him for his collections The Paper Menagerie and The Hidden Girl, his fantasy quartet The Dandelion Dynasty, inspiring the show Pantheon, or perhaps even translating The Three-Body Problem. His recent novel All That We See or Seem is a near-future thriller about a beloved AI ‘dream artist’ who disappears without a trace, as well as the hacker trying to find her. It is the first of several planned ‘Julia Z novels’.In this episode, we discussed Liu’s inspiration for this new novel, his concept of ‘silkpunk’ in the context of The Dandelion Dynasty, and the uncertain future of art in the age of AI. You can find more information about him on his website kenliu.name or right here on Substack at The Lion's Teeth. Enjoy!TIMESTAMPS00:00:12 – Intro00:00:56 – Ken Liu’s new thriller All That We See or Seem00:02:22 – “Dreamweaving” and why using AI feels like a dream00:09:26 – Why did LLMs not make it into literature earlier?00:18:13 – Writing near-future SF and “Real Artists”00:27:36 – AI as a copying machine of the “desired original”00:34:02 – Compensating artists in the age of AI00:41:53 – Silkpunk and The Dandelion Dynasty00:49:05 – Tax policy and cultural technology00:56:23 – “All life is an experiment”00:00:57 – Conclusion and final recommendations01:02:51 – Synthesized Sunsets Backstage begins01:05:17 – Ken Liu is unusually optimistic about AI art01:12:22 – How will idiolects of AI and humans feed off each other?01:18:03 – The Dandelion Dynasty as an experiment in exposition01:23:45 – The character of Mata Zyndu and writing morality out of time01:26:06 – The Paper Menagerie and The Hidden Girl are really different01:27:44 – “Byzantine Empathy” by Ken Liu01:30:29 – Ken Liu on the irrealism of fiction that avoids technology01:33:03 – New season / reopening for submissions01:35:03 – Conclusion and final recommendations This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/subscribe