Reactor’s Edge: Vance’s Nuclear Gambit
"A visionary plan, a perfect storm, and the exodus that followed"
J.D. Vance stood at the podium, his voice echoing across the National Mall. "Today marks the beginning of a new era for America. An era of prosperity, energy abundance, and economic freedom."
The crowd cheered as Vance outlined his bold vision: a drastically downsized federal government, the abolition of income tax, and a nationwide network of small, modular Thorium reactors. BitCoin would replace the U.S. Dollar in international trade, wiping out the national debt. Behind him, a cadre of billionaires nodded approvingly, their influence palpable in every word of his speech.
As Vance signed executive orders dismantling climate change initiatives, meteorologists across the country furrowed their brows at unusual patterns forming on their screens.
The Surge
Two years into Vance's term, America was riding high on a wave of cheap energy. Data farms sprawled across the landscape, their humming servers powered by an ever-expanding network of small Thorium reactors. The economy boomed, fueled by a surge in domestic manufacturing and the newfound wealth of a tax-free, crypto-rich populace.
But as summer approached, the weather took an ominous turn. Hurricane after hurricane battered the East Coast, while the West suffered under an unprecedented heatwave and mega-wildfires. In Washington, Vance's advisors assured him it was nothing to worry about.
Then came the day the skies turned an eerie shade of green.
The Convergence
It started with a series of freak storms converging over the Midwest. Tornadoes ripped through nuclear facilities, their safety systems overwhelmed. As reactors began to melt down, the East Coast was hit by a monstrous hurricane, breaching seawalls and flooding coastal plants.
In the Situation Room, Vance watched in horror as red dots lit up across the map, each representing a compromised reactor. His phone buzzed incessantly with reports of power grid failures and mass evacuations.
"Mr. President," his chief of staff gasped, "We've lost contact with the entire Eastern Seaboard."
The Exodus
Chaos reigned as millions fled the spreading radiation zones. Highways became parking lots, and desperate citizens commandeered everything from boats to crop dusters in their bid to escape.
In a bunker deep beneath the White House, Vance faced the grim reality of his decimated government. With two-thirds of federal employees laid off, the response was woefully inadequate. He turned to his billionaire advisors, but they had already fled to private islands and fortified compounds.
The 50-year-old Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant, located southeast of D.C. in Maryland, stands on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Although scheduled for decommissioning in 2034, Vance had ordered it to be kept in service indefinitely. The reactor containment building had withstood the 6- to 8-foot storm surge during Hurricane Isabel in 2003. This latest surge off the Atlantic had been triple that, drowning the entire site under 10 feet of water and blowing the lids off both reactors. Vance's Secret Service detail had ordered Marine-One to the South Lawn.
As reports of looting and violence flooded in, Vance made a fateful decision. "We evacuate," he ordered, his voice barely a whisper.
The Reckoning
Six months after the Great Convergence, Vance stood on the deck of a repurposed oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, now the de facto capital of what remained of the United States. The horizon was dotted with ships and makeshift floating cities, home to millions of climate refugees.
As he gazed at the irradiated coastline, Vance reflected on the hubris that had led to this catastrophe. The once-booming economy was in shambles, the promise of unlimited clean energy now a radioactive nightmare.
A young aide approached, tablet in hand. "Mr. President, we've received a transmission. It's from the Climate Coalition. They say they can help, but they have conditions."
On his desk were urgent national security warnings showing the projected surface temperature of the Gulf at the start of the next hurricane season. Vance closed his eyes, the weight of his decisions crushing down on him. As he opened them, a steely resolve settled in his gaze. "Tell them," he said, "I'm ready to listen.”
Our Benevolent Overlords
Some of my regular readers will have already guessed that AI helped write the above story. It seems to need less tweaking the more it gets to know me. The engine I used was Perplexity 1.0.2, free to download from the App Store, and this was the prompt:
Assume you are a science fiction writer like Neal Stephenson or Kim Stanley Robinson. Weave a story in five chapters about a new president, J.D. Vance, in his first term. Convinced by advisors, a cadre of well-known billionaires, that climate change is not an urgent problem, he has drastically downsized the federal government, laying off 2/3 of employees, stopped charging income tax, replacing it with tariffs on foreign goods, reopened retired nuclear plants and spread a first generation of small, modular Thorium reactors to federal installations and communities around the country. For a while, the surplus of available energy allows data farms to expand, many more facets of society to electrify, and boosts GDP. But then the unimaginable (to the billionaires) occurs. A rapid extreme weather convergence strikes the continental US. Floods, mudslides, debris flows and ocean surge knock out power grids and cause multiple nuclear meltdown events simultaneously. Describe the chaotic evacuations, the response of President Vance, and the aftermath. Keep this within the genre of a nail-biting action story.
Reality Bites
I don’t actually know the outcome of the election next week. If I did, I might have provided a back-story about whether Vance became president after Donald Trump won but something unfortunate happened to his health, or whether we are 4 or 8 years down the road and Vance has won by his own right, or maybe just been appointed by the outgoing president. For story purposes, these nuances hardly matter, except that by 8 years from now, we may have experienced the artificial general intelligence singularity, a nuclear armageddon, or some Black Swan that will have changed everything.
AI language models generate human-like text by predicting word sequences based on vast datasets. One of my ethical concerns is the question of authorship. Should AI be credited as a co-author if it significantly contributes to a piece of writing? Current consensus suggests that AI should not receive authorship credit because it lacks personhood, intentionality, and creativity. It can’t apply for a copyright. Everything it writes is either plagiarized or derivative. Ensuring accuracy and originality for whatever I publish still falls to me. I also feel an obligation to maintain transparency with my readers.
Ethical implications differ between fictional and academic writing. In fiction, AI serves as a tool for inspiration rather than accuracy. I’m often surprised by new narrative possibilities. I did not imagine Vance retreating to an abandoned oil rig in my AI-generated story, but it was a nice touch. I inserted the part about Calvert Cliffs and Marine-One.
My prompt said nothing about the sky turning green. Did Perplexity know that is what happened in Falujah during Operation Iraqi Freedom when US tanks rolled down every street, firing a depleted uranium round into every residence? Does it know about the wave of “jellyfish babies” that persisted for years after?
The stakes are higher in academic writing than in speculative fantasy. Hallucinations are unacceptable. The tendency that AI has demonstrated of generating convincing but incorrect information poses a significant risk, not just to other scholars engaged in similar research, but to what we “know” of our rigorously defined reality. Notice the extra arms and backward legs in the Bing Image Creator drawing at the top.
The integration of AI into writing also affects the publishing industry. If publishers prioritize cost-effective AI content over human agents, there is a risk of reductionist standardization. We’ve already seen misuse of AI algorithms for creating propaganda and fake news, with disastrous consequences. We are still in the Wild West as far as ethical restrictions.
As a writer, I am attempting to navigate these challenges by maintaining transparency about AI's role in my work. I am cautious about factual accuracy when I am sourcing and writing. Still, I enjoy eliciting any number of lovely machine-generated suggestions that get my own creative juices flowing.
References
Baquero, Carlos. "Is having AI generate text cheating?." Communications of the ACM 65, no. 12 (2022): 6-7.
”Contemplating & Exploring Ethical Considerations of Large Language Models," Pressbooks Library at Texas A&M University.
Deng, Chengyuan, Yiqun Duan, Xin Jin, Heng Chang, Yijun Tian, Han Liu, Henry Peng Zou et al. "Deconstructing The Ethics of Large Language Models from Long-standing Issues to New-emerging Dilemmas." arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.05392 (2024).
Ghajargar, Maliheh, Jeffrey Bardzell, and Love Lagerkvist. "A redhead walks into a bar: experiences of writing fiction with artificial intelligence." In Proceedings of the 25th international academic MindTrek conference, pp. 230-241. 2022.
Kasunic, Anna, and Geoff Kaufman. "Learning to listen: Critically considering the role of AI in human storytelling and character creation." In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Storytelling, pp. 1-13. 2018.
Penn, Christopher S. "Mind Readings: AI Ethics Inside Language Models," January 11, 2024.
Sharples, Mike, and Rafael Pérez y Pérez. Story machines: How computers have become creative writers. Routledge, 2022.
"Using AI to Develop and Workshop Your Characters," Writer's Digest. Accessed October 28, 2024.
Wallace-Wells, David, 2024. The Election Looks Like an Intramural Squabble Between Billionaires, The New York Times (Oct. 30, 2024, 3:10 p.m.)
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| A doctor checks on Jana Ayad, a malnourished Palestinian girl, at the International Medical Corps field hospital in the Deir al-Balah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip last month. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters) |
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#RestorationGeneration.
當人類被關在籠内，地球持續美好，所以，給我們的教訓是:
人類毫不重要，空氣，土壤，天空和流水没有你們依然美好。
所以當你們走出籠子的時候，請記得你們是地球的客人，不是主人。
When humans are locked in a cage, the earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is: Human beings are not important. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.
We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the great old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. It is not too late. All of these great works are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.
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