Episode 105: Tim Boucher on the Fever Dream of the AI Mind

Can AI imagine itself?

Is an organic life possible in a machine world?

Do you want a computer chip in your brain?

Tim Boucher is the author of the AI Lore books, over 100 illustrated volumes of conspiracy-tinged dystopian fiction set in a future where AI has taken control of the planet. Before that he was a content moderator at a major social media platform, an experience that “left him with symptoms of mild PTSD” that took him nearly three years to recover from. For Tim, telling stories about a speculative dark future dominated by AI has in part been therapeutic, a way of exploring and exorcising the feelings that arose in him as a consequence of seeing what humans are capable of.

Our conversation was very rich in questions, about how we see and inhabit the world, and how machines and algorithms have insinuated themselves between us and what we might call reality.

Tim sells his books directly at https://lostbooks.gumroad.com/. He doesn’t maintain a social media presence, for reasons made clear in our conversation; he prefers to spend his time gardening and building furniture.

We, on the other hand, have accounts on X (@1984TodayPod) and Instagram (@1984Today), in case you want to come visit.

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