ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND VICTOR PELEVIN

Abstract

Victor Pelevin in his later works, as well as in his early short stories and novels, often reflects on digital reality, the algorithms of the future, and the problems of the interaction between artificial intelligence and humans. He considers possible answers to the question whether artificial intelligence is capable of independent thinking or is just a simulation of human consciousness activity. This article focuses on artificial intelligence, the thought experiment the Chinese room, the Turing test, and the optical illusion called the Necker’s cube. It also discusses how these experiments, ideas and hypotheses are treated in the works of Pelevin, in particular in his novel “S.N.U.F.F.” (2011). It seems that Pelevin’s prose, addressed to the problems of artificial intelligence, is characterized by an oscillation between two extremes, which connects the writer, especially his later works, with the tradition of metamodernism.   

Extended abstract:

In his later works, as well as in his early short stories and novels, Victor Pelevin often reflects on digital reality, the algorithms of the future, and the problems of interaction between artificial intelligence (AI) and humans. He considers possible answers to the question of whether AI is capable of independent thought or merely a simulation of human conscious activity. In his search for an answer to the question of the nature of AI, Pelevin turns to thought experiments, which are hypothetical situations that exist in the imagination and are constructed to test a hypothesis by presenting and tracing the probable consequences of its realisation.
The article focuses on the Chinese Room Thought Experiment, the Turing Test, and the optical illusion called Necker's Cube; the aim is to trace the logic of philosophical argumentation in a fictional text and to reveal the meanings behind the mental experiments in Pelevin's tenth novel, "S.N.U.F.F." (2011). Philosophical experimentation in literature, and in particular in Pelevin's works, has not yet been the subject of systematic scientific description, and this paper aims to fill this gap.
The hypothesis is that in addressing the problems of AI in his novel "S.N.U.F.F.", Pelevin reproduces the competing, often mutually exclusive arguments in discussions of philosophical thought experiments, thus problematising the possibility of an unambiguous answer to the question posed by the experiment. Pelevin updates Searle's thought experiment by forcing the reader to search for an answer to a given cognitive puzzle. The notion of strong or weak artificial intelligence, i.e. the choice in favour of the presence or absence of independent thought and self-consciousness, is not initially established, nor is an assessment of metaphorical transference. An important role is played by the interpretation of the Chinese room, on which this evaluation actually depends. The interpretation allows for different ways of contrasting and comparing the human mind and the machine mind. In unfolding the metaphor of the Chinese room, Pelevin focuses on the well-known effect of the optical illusion of Necker's cube. The orientation of the cube changes depending on the focus chosen: one edge or the other appears in the foreground. Necker's Cube supports a key metaphor in Pelevin's novel and is the key to reading it. There is a constant slippage or oscillation between mutually exclusive approaches: AI has an independent consciousness and AI does not have an independent consciousness. This authorial strategy of oscillation places Pelevin's late works in the tradition of metamodernism, which is characterised by oscillation.