Ascians
I have been reading Gene Wolfes, The Book of the New Sun Series. I came to a passage in The Citadel of the Autarch. In this passage a new people group is introduced, the Ascians. Ascian is a real word in Greek and Latin it means person or thing without a shadow. Wolfes Ascians are from somewhere near the equator of his Urth, the term Ascian also classically refers to people living in warmer climates. Wolfe brilliantly uses the peculiarity of words of established languages instead of making up an elaborate fictional language to build his Urth. I started thinking about Wolfes description of the Ascians and the regular conversations across social media concerning AI and specifically ChatGPT.
The Ascians have a specific scripted way of speaking. Wolfe describes everything they say being strictly from approved text. Language is meaningless that is not of their approved text. If they were to regard language outside of the approved text with meaning, then they would be capable of free thinking and become disaffected with the state and disloyal. If they only speak in approved text, then they can remain beyond reproach of disloyalty to the state. The Ascian character, speaks about Correct Thought and how it’s the thought of the populace. The populace cannot betray the populace or the Group of Seventeen. Those who write the approved text are referred to as The Group of Seventeen. After Severian (the hero of the series) comprehends what he learns of the Ascians he says, “to think of those millions upon millions without speech or confined to parroting proverbial phrases that must surely have long ago lost most of their meaning. It must surely be a trick, or a lie, or a mistake. Such a nation could not exist…” The Ascian hears Severian ponder this out loud and replies, “How shall the state be most vigorous? It shall be most vigorous without conflict. How shall it be without conflict? When it is without disagreement. How shall disagreement be banished? By banishing the four causes of disagreement: lies, foolish talk, boastful talk, and talk which serves only to incite quarrels. How shall the four causes be banished? By speaking only Correct Thought. Then shall the state be without disagreement. Being without disagreement it shall be without conflict. Being without conflict it shall be vigorous, strong and secure.”
Linguistic relativity, known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis indicates that language structure informs the speakers' intellections and their weltanschauung. Cognition is comparative to one's spoken language. The concept of linguistic relativity was born out of the German Romanticism movement. Johnann Georg Hamann in his "Essay Concerning an Academic Question”, states “the lineaments of their language will thus correspond to the direction of their mentality.” Willhelm von Humboldt introduced linguistics to the German romanticist program, proposing that language generates an internal dialogue which is the framework of thought. Linguistic relativism asserts that people see the world based on the language they use to characterize it. Linguistic determinism proposes that a person’s language either restricts or enables their ideation, if a language lacks a word for something that may mean the speakers of that language lack the capability to understand that concept. A person that speaks a language that has many descriptive words and definitions for a concept may also have a better understanding of it. Language gives meaning to experience and under many social circumstances it may even inform experiences. In this instance I am thinking of phenomena Munchausen by internet and other social contagions that are largely informed by language.
Wolfes concept of Correct Thought is a limited language meant to forestall the Ascians from developing or exercising independent critical thought. However, Gene Wolfe suggests that intelligent Ascians can express with approved sentences only, meanings that exceed those of the quoted sources by quoting sentences with specific connotations, separate from the meaning of the approved text.
I started thinking about Correct Thought and the Ascians as they relate to the current topic of AI and ChatGPT etc. There have been various tweets circulated documenting ChatGPT will not acknowledge the n-word or the name of Lovecraft’s cat. One recent headline declared that ChatGPT would not define a woman, lauded Democrats, disparaged Republicans and stated nuclear weapons are less of a threat than racism. ChatGPT is not free from human modification or moderation and therefore not genuinely “artificial” in its intelligence. OpenAI was found to outsource content moderation of ChatGPT to Sama, a company employing low wage workers at $170 a month to flag or block users from trying to provoke AI into making violent or bigoted statements. One advocate for ChatGPT praised it for its ability to provide useful common sense. It seems like people are using it to generate and inform their opinions. It is functioning as a repository for outsourcing opinions and thoughts. Why as a conscious human being with a soul would you outsource your opinions and thoughts to a supposed immaterial, alien source. These chatbots are certainly not impartial as stated above there are human moderators most of which are not the target consumer for the services ChatGPT is offering. This is mostly and precisely meant foe immediate use in the United States and the West. These content moderators obviously are given a list of “Correct Thought” and approved text. The AI is not making the list of approved concepts and bigoted terms, someone else is feeding it that data. The question is who is informing the chatbot of what Correct Thought is and what do they hope to accomplish by instituting conformity in language. Chatbots are being promoted to people as storehouses for accurate thoughts and information. When you use an AI service like ChatGPT you are outsourcing language to a set of preapproved phrases, this has been demonstrated many times in circulated excerpts on social media of censured topics and terms. If language is the means by which we formulate our worldview, surely outsourcing language and having it censured or monitored will remove or dampen the instinct to exercise authority over one’s thoughts. How can I trust what I know or think unless I run it through the chatbot first? (LOL). In Wolfes Ascian world, “All who speak Correct Thought speak well. The superiority of one student compared to another is how well and fervently they speak Correct Thought.” The current culture on our Earth has become so divisive, this is exercised mostly through language. Most discourse now is just various modes of name calling and accusations. The implementation of things like ChatGPT is a way to modify language entirely. If you remove certain concepts, remove the language used to describe them or change the language it becomes a tool that can be used to insert and or remove certain dynamics from humanity completely. A red flag for unapproved speech with the chatbot becomes an appraisal of social credit in a not-so-distant dystopia.
It was already pointed out that Ascian means, shadowless, which could also correspond to being soulless. The Ascians enslaved to Erebus, one of Urth's alien monsters and forfeited their humanity and future, they are indentured to an alien overseer, forced to speak in approved stock phrases. As Gene Wolfe says, “Human beings lose their humanity. Some give it up others and lose it without intending to, often when they think they are enhancing it, or rising to some state higher than that to which we are born, others like the Ascians have it stripped from them.” These chatbots are novelties and toys for now, it may never amount to much more than the primitive architecture we have now, but I think, it deserves caution in so much as we already know how adept social media is and has been at changing and moderating society. Why wouldn’t this be another tool for further regulation and transformation?
“Until the new sun comes, we have but a choice of evils. All have been tried, and all have failed…. You wish for progress? The Ascians have it. They are deafened by it, crazed by the death of Nature till they are ready to accept Erebus and the rest as gods.” Gene Wolfe.