A book in conversation
Prey
Michael Crichton
Discussed on these episodes
Did OpenAI Create “Secret AI Civilizations”? | Tech Decoded
Deep Questions with Cal Newport · 2026-09-03
Cal Newport notes that his 13-year-old son is reading Michael Crichton's 2002 novel Prey at the same time OpenAI's AI-swarm revelations broke, observing that Crichton's AI villain is itself a literal swarm of small cooperating agents — the same concept now unsettling the public. Newport also notes that LLMs trained on Prey (and similar sci-fi) are liable to reproduce its tropes when prompted in ways that evoke AI-run-amok narratives.
Listen to the original ↗ · first mentioned around 2:18
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