A.I. Stories in the Age of AI Hype: A Conversation with Ted Chiang

In an interview, Ted Chiang discusses how to write science fiction about artificial intelligence amid Silicon Valley hype, citing Ali Alkhatib's view of AI as a political project that shifts authority toward centralized power and his own argument that AI easily helps capital against labor but not the reverse. Chiang says writers cannot guarantee readers interpret fiction correctly, and suggests alternatives such as writing about LLMs critically, setting sentient-machine stories in distant futures or secondary worlds, or explaining a story's scientific basis, pointing to Greg Egan's 2024 novelette "Death and the Gorgon." He adds that his novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects still raises compelling questions about moral obligations to sentient digital life, but that LLMs are not conscious, cannot suffer, and are owed nothing.