Get the latest tech news

Don't Panic, but Douglas Adams Predicted a Lot of This

How the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy foresaw AI chatbots, voice assistants, and irritating kitchen appliances decades before anyone else

But my point is simply that nowadays, you can recite lines from movies to strangers on Reddit and receive a bazillion upvotes, and everyone will think you're hilarious, and this, really, is why I do not like to quote Douglas Adams. That's right, I'm talking about Clippy, that goddamn bouncing paper clip who made an entire generation want to get out of their chairs and choke Bill Gates to death with their bare hands. In the context of artificial intelligence, this is called prompt engineering, a phrase that didn't exist when Douglas Adams conceived of Deep Thought, his fictional AI.

Get the Android app