Alma Katsu: From CIA Futurist to Thriller Writer, and Why Deepfakes Matter in Incarnate

The useful part

So, I quit the foresight business, thinking I was getting off the hamster wheel for good. Spend any time in technology forecasting and you soon learn that unintended consequences are what you need to watch out for—while being, at the same time, nearly impossible to predict. Typically, the creator of a technology foresees a specific application for their product.

How it works

• That meant I had to figure out how to neutralize it but in a wholly plausible way.
• Luckily, that's another aspect of forecasting—part of the job is coming up with possible scenarios for how the issue might play out.
• It seemed like an impossible outcome at the time, SoraAI's success predicted by tech and business experts, but such about-faces do happen in the tech world—it's just that they're rare.
• Article continues after advertisement Every new technology goes through the same cycle, to varying degrees, of boom and leveling out (or crashing), but with generative AI (now just referred to as AI) the...
• If a product is lucky enough to be widely adopted, now thousands of people are thinking up new applications for it—and that's when those unintended consequences rear their petulant heads.

What to take from it

In case you're unfamiliar with the term, "deepfake" referred to the use of a combination of computer programs to create an image or video of something that never happened. Fake news may have been common at the time, but being able to produce a convincing video spouting disinformation was still difficult and required special skills. Now, using genAI, anyone can create what is essentially a "deepfake" with a free online tool.

Example or evidence

• In the beginning, these were videos of politicians or celebrities saying or doing something that they never did.
• People create them to prank their friends, exact revenge on ex-lovers, or just to alleviate boredom.
• As I was wrapping up revisions, a real-life development in genAI threatened to upend the novel.
• The premise hinges on Dorothy, the main character, having the unique ability to basically create magic with her programming.

Details worth keeping

I couldn't continue and grow my writing career. My new novel is about the unintended consequences of technology. It was right around this time that OpenAI's SoraAI burst into public discourse.

Related coverage

• Thebigthrill: From beloved horror maven Alma Katsu comes a terrifying reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray for the internet age.
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