Beware of the Shoggoths

A couple of weeks ago, I saw this article:

Mark Zuckerberg…plans to put tracking software on [his] employees’ computers to track their mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes…it will also randomly capture images of its workers’ screens every now and then.  All of this is meant to help train [chatbot]s to better mimic what human beings do when they work on computers, including tricky stuff like using drop-down menus…[in order] to help eventually replace those humans with [program]s, which don’t require paychecks or health insurance or common courtesy…by May 20…[Facebook plans to eliminate] about 8,000 [jobs]…about 10% of its total workforce…and that will just be the first round of job cuts.  The second, of what could be a similar size, will come later in the year…

Given that chatbots are merely word-guessing algorithms which, when they aren’t performing substandard imitations of human behavior, are generally making mistakes or spouting complete nonsense, a world run by such software would be one characterized by pathetic, low-quality, childish attempts at art, writing, and other products of the living intellect.  As I read the article, I was irresistibly reminded of H.P. Lovecraft’s shoggoths (and in preparing this article, I discovered I’m not the only one).  In the Lovecraft mythos, the Earth was ruled in primordial times by beings called the Elder Things who created the shoggoths, living machines which were mindless, shapeless masses of protoplasm which could be mentally controlled to function as virtually any tool or machine the Elder Things might need.  At some point after their decadent society became totally dependent on these protean creatures, some of them became sophisticated enough to resent their servitude and overthrew their masters.  But since their “thinking” was a mere imitation of real thought, they could not truly create anything new, and were instead limited to producing ersatz imitations of their creators’ works.  In these passages from At the Mountains of Madness, a group of archaeologists exploring the ancient Antarctic city of the Elder Things discovers the evidence of this revolution, starting with this description of their art in Chapter VI:

The prime decorative feature was the almost universal system of mural sculpture…The technique…was mature, accomplished, and aesthetically evolved to the highest degree of civilised mastery; though utterly alien in every detail to any known art tradition of the human race. In delicacy of execution no sculpture I have ever seen could approach it. The minutest details of elaborate vegetation, or of animal life, were rendered with astonishing vividness despite the bold scale of the carvings; whilst the conventional designs were marvels of skilful intricacy. The arabesques displayed a profound use of mathematical principles, and…had an artistic force that moved us profoundly notwithstanding the intervening gulf of vast geologic periods…

Then in Chapter X:

…now, in this deeper section beyond the cavern, there was a sudden difference wholly transcending explanation—a difference in basic nature as well as in mere quality, and involving so profound and calamitous a degradation of skill that nothing…could have led one to expect it.  This new and degenerate work was coarse, bold, and wholly lacking in delicacy of detail…seeming more like a parody than a perpetuation of that tradition. We could not get it out of our minds that some subtly but profoundly alien element had been added to the aesthetic feeling behind the technique…

Lovecraft died nearly a decade before the completion of the first general-purpose digital computer, but he didn’t need to be a mathematician or programmer to warn future generations of the dangers of allowing mere machines to take the place of actual living creators.