Three books stand at the top of the dystopian genre, even several decades after their publication: Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley; Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury; and perhaps supremely, 1984, by George Orwell.

Each novel features versions of a futuristic society in which freedom is restricted (through different means) and foresees a bleak existence governed by the basest impulses in the human race. While Orwell’s masterpiece is typically hailed as a warning of the surveillance state, where individuality is erased in favor of group identity, it is also about the rise of technologies that replace human thought. Novelist Walter Kirn points this out in a recent episode of America This Week:

1984 is the story of the extinguishing, the abolition, of a single human consciousness. In other words, at the beginning of 1984, we’re introduced to a man who’s about to write a diary. The subversive act, the sort of crossing of the Rubicon in this story, is a human being who decides to start writing down his thoughts.

Individual thought counts as criminal activity in 1984. This is why Winston, the novel’s protagonist, begins his path to enlightenment through the practice of writing. Writing is concomitant with thinking, and is a solitary event, meaning no one is looking over Winston’s shoulder and dictating what he needs to say. Despite what he writes, which starts out as essentially regurgitated propaganda, it represents a step towards self-realization. To write is to think.

In addition, Julia, another major character in the novel, has a job in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Basically, her job is to oversee machines that pump out books. Sound familiar? There are no more novelists, poets, essayists, or journalists in 1984. There are no writers, period. There are only those who maintain the propaganda machines.

Foreseeing AI?

AI is not limited to large language models like ChatGPT, but people are certainly already using it to generate essays, computer code, briefs, and citation lists (which are often erroneous). Colleges are having to figure out how to handle the massive number of students who depend on AI to do their homework and write their research papers for them. Whatever uses AI has in the medical field, software development, and other tools like facial recognition systems (which in itself hearkens to Orwell’s nightmarish surveillance state), it’s hard to see how using AI to “write” will help us in the long run. Certain technologies like the cell phone or automobile make certain actions easier, such a communication and transportation. What happens, though, when technology starts to erode our capacity to think? We may be in some danger of going down the Orwellian path, where individual thought, though it may not technically be criminal, is endangered.

Orwell recognized that for free societies to work, there must be ample space for free thought. A simple act like writing a diary entry emblemizes the struggle to stay human.