What Michael Crichton Got Right About Computers, and AI

A 1983 book about home computers offers a surprisingly useful way to think about today’s latest technology.

In Michael Crichton’s 1983 book Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers, Crichton provides valuable and oddly prescient insights on computers. You wouldn’t expect a 43-year-old book on technology to feel so relevant. To be fair, much of it isn’t, especially the appendices, which include old computer code Crichton wrote.

But while reading the book, you realize that the “How to Think About Computers” subtitle is actually the most important part of the book. The subtitle would be better written as, “How to Think About New Technology.” Because Crichton’s unique perspective and level-headed approach to technology is very relatable today.

Case in point: Crichton’s perspective on primitive chatbots like ELIZA. ELIZA was a very rudimentary pattern-matching chatbot that was designed to simulate therapy. It was an early iteration of ChatGPT; not built with the same technology, but the same premise. As Crichton writes, “The program fooled a great many people into thinking that a new era of automated therapy was about to begin. Many otherwise sensible scientists advocated just that.”

Later he writes, “Without doubt, inappropriate faith in the computer is an issue that must be faced.” This could easily be written about AI today.

The home computer revolution was pretty new in 1983. And computers were seen as job stealers. People held a lot of negative views toward the new technology. And that’s where it’s important to help reframe our own attitudes and thoughts about AI. I’m not saying we should condone AI’s mass theft and the slop we see daily, or that if you’re against AI, you should be for it. I’m saying that if you’re afraid of technology stealing jobs or creeping into artistic spaces, you shouldn’t let that fear drive you.

With computers, Crichton claims he isn’t sure whether or not they’d lead to loss of jobs. But he stresses we don’t actually know the future, and that fears and hype of technology go hand in hand. Don’t let the hype scare you.

Crichton states:

“But in our disillusionment, it’s worth remembering that the virtues of the technological future have been consistently oversold—often by the technologists, always by the press, and frequently by consumers themselves.”

I’ll end with this quote: “People are people. Machines are machines. Only a fool confuses them.”

Michael Crichton, Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983).