In 1829, an event took place that unleashed a technological revolution. At the Rainhill Trials a group of steam locomotives squared off to determine which one could win a series of tests of speed, strength and reliability. The winning machine, Rocket, not only blew away its competition at the trials, it also set the direction for steam locomotive development for the following century. What does all this have to do with GPT-3, the transformer language model that OpenAI made available in a limited beta starting in June? Some reviewers have heralded GPT-3 as the first glimpse of artificial general intelligence, while others are calling it a massive lookup table.

I should like the 1973 film Soylent Green. Actually, I should love it. The movie deals with issues that are even more important now than they were 50 years ago. And as someone who's spent plenty of time exploring the connections between sci-fi films, technology innovation, and the future, I feel a certain professional obligation to sing its praises. Instead, though, I find myself frustrated by the movie and its hyperbolic and naive handling of complex themes.

In 1829, an event took place that unleashed a technological revolution. At the Rainhill Trials a group of steam locomotives squared off to determine which one could win a series of tests of speed, strength and reliability. The winning machine, Rocket, not only blew away its competition at the trials, it also set the direction for steam locomotive development for the following century. What does all this have to do with GPT-3, the transformer language model that OpenAI made available in a limited beta starting in June? Some reviewers have heralded GPT-3 as the first glimpse of artificial general intelligence, while others are calling it a massive lookup table.

Maggie Shen King is the author of An Excess Male, a science fiction novel that explores the future consequences of China's one-child policy. The policy was enacted in 1979 in an attempt to curb overpopulation, and even though the country started to phase it out two years ago it led to a huge shortage of potential wives due to so many parents choosing to have sons instead of daughters. "It sounds like dystopian fiction, but in actuality China was the one nation that had the political system and the wherewithal to enforce the policy," King says in Episode 279 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "And 40 years of this is very, very scary to think about." Overpopulation has been a popular theme in science fiction for decades, from the movie Soylent Green, based on the Harry Harrison novel Make Room! Make Room! to the Star Trek episode "The Mark of Gideon."