Sept 2024
How I think sci-fi and improv aid our approach to future technology/AI:
In improv, humor is found by building the world as realistically as possible until you come across the "first unusual thing" [1].
Then you continue building a realistic world, but around that unusual thing.
Intentionally trying to be funny or wacky backfires, the realistic exploration of a world around naturally occurring "unusual things" is what makes a bit so compelling.
In sci-fi, instead of an unusual thing, realistic explorations are around some fundamental change — e.g. humans can't die (Altered Carbon), everything is recorded (Black Mirror), everything is scored (Black Mirror), etc.
When technology renders some of these changes real through a paradigm shift (LLMs, cheap orbit), we then already have "pre-generated" scenarios and explorations to draw from.
Thus, this imagination can yield real returns if you can build a biz ready to exploit a correctly-predicted shift (there's a reason Netflix wasn't called Mailflix).
Or in the case of a widely-unexpected shift, just raw speed.
tl;dr -- be right or be fast.
Footnotes
1 - as taught by Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual, a phenomenal read