Cambridge author Phillip Brown’s new book raises questions about AI and its limitations

Cambridge author Phillip Brown’s latest book, Undeliverable Letters, Unreachable Galaxies – Or, The Man in the Old Bowler Hat, is something of a departure from his usual literary offerings.

For rather than taking the form of a standard novel, Undeliverable Letters… is essentially a collection of unsent, dystopian ‘letters’, written by someone concerned about the human condition.

The bowler hat-wearing author of these letters – addressed to Androidians on the planet Androidia – would have us imagine that the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and man’s consequent moral and intellectual decline, together with disastrous climatic change and imminent global nuclear war, have all conspired to plunge humanity into chaos and destruction.

Phillip, who studied for his PhD in philosophy at St John’s College, Cambridge, says that AI is “a topic that worries a lot of people – and it’s moving very, very fast, and so it’s worth looking at”.

He continues: “What I’m really interested in are the possible limits of artificial intelligence, because people seem to be thinking, or half believing, that AI is without limits – what it can achieve is without limit.

“I wanted to just clarify that and raise questions about its limitations.”

The collection of ‘letters’ that make up the book also raise the question of whether it would be both possible and desirable for androids to not only correct themselves, but also to be ‘programmed’ to develop an impeccable moral sense, thereby correcting the ‘defects in the human machine’.

“There are things we just don’t know, I mean we’re working in the dark here,” says Phillip, “but I just wanted to challenge the assumption that many people seem to entertain, although vaguely because there are very few experts in the field, and even the experts are not sure what’s going to happen.

“But I wanted to challenge the idea, perhaps, that the possibilities are endless.”

Breaking down the title of the book, Phillip says: “Well, the letters are not real letters, they are written by somebody that I’ve called ‘The Man in the Old Bowler Hat’.

“He’s obviously somebody who is worried about the state of the world and the human condition and so on, the propensity for war and man’s inhumanity to man etc.

“And he’s also worried about what AI might become – or do – in the future, so he is writing these letters…

“It’s a figurative title really because the galaxies are unreachable – not in the physical sense, but in the sense that he is assuming something which cannot be achieved, not yet anyway, that androids might one day replace human beings as a perfect species.

“In other words, that they would be capable of understanding a moral code, in much the way that human beings do – in other words, they cannot replace human beings.

“So undeliverable letters because they’re not real letters, unreachable galaxies because the assumptions entertained make no sense.

“The Man in the Old Bowler Hat is the person who writes the letters. There’s a prologue in the book which talks about the man, which helps to make sense of it, and in fact the prologue is a criticism of some of the ideas in the letters.”

Phillip, who reveals that the eccentric figure of The Man in the Old Bowler Hat is based on “a character that I’ve seen”, adds: “There is a marked contrast between the urgency of his appeals, and the fact that they are repeated over and over, and the silence with which they are met – because nobody can answer him.

“Now this contrast suggests that there is something radically wrong with the notion that there is any alternative to human life, when it comes to questions of moral conscience and moral values.

“In other words, the idea that a machine, however complex and however capable, can actually become a functioning moral being is just illogical and ludicrous.

“I couldn’t write a book which explains that more fully, without it being academically philosophical, which is not the sort of book I wanted to write – if only because it would only appeal to a small minority of academics.

“I wanted it to be more accessible, so I wanted to raise the issue of AI in the context of its limits.”

Undeliverable Letters, Unreachable Galaxies – Or, The Man in the Old Bowler Hat is available now.