Kafka in the age of artificial intelligence

Abstract

Our singer is called Franz. “Wer [ihn] nicht gehört hat, kennt nicht die Macht des Gesanges” (Kafka 193). These (slightly altered) opening lines of “Josefine, die Sängerin oder Das Volk der Mäuse” came to mind when an audience member came up to me after a presentation I gave recently on “Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” She lamented the fact that not one of her students in the past three years had a notion of who Franz Kafka was. I was not surprised. For years, so many of us have relied on high school literature classes to introduce at least one of Kafka's stories to our students—usually it had been The Metamorphosis—that served as a base we could build on to take them to higher levels of understanding and appreciation of this world literary phenomenon. The new normal means that without a “canon” or “cultural literacy” as we knew it in the twentieth century (and I fully realize how loaded those two terms are today), Franz, the singer, like his beloved mouse Josephine, “wird [wohl]…bald…in gesteigerter Erlösung vergessen sein wie alle [seine] Brüder” (209). In Kafka's story “Ein Bericht für eine Akademie,” Rotpeter, the chimpanzee, explains that he managed to attain “die Durchschnittsbildung eines Europäers” (174). Our task to keep Kafka's works alive and part of “the cultural level of an average” college student (European or otherwise) has now become a bit more difficult. Like the protagonist of “Der Bau,” however, I am prepared “mit der Stirn…tausend- und tausendmal tage- und nächtelang gegen die Erde [anzurennen]” (425) and keep delving into Kafka's texts, long and short, to (I hope) illuminate the power—and absolute joy—of his writing.

I find that Kafka's accessibility begins with the little texts, which are, perhaps, also his most humorous. I never cease to enjoy Kafka's own evident amusement in writing his little story “Poseidon,” perhaps my favorite of his smaller pieces. Since I am working on a special issue on Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence for the online journal Humanities that should be out later this year, I have come to think of “Poseidon” in this strange new context.

Kafka wrote this gem in 1920, but it was published only posthumously in 1936 in an edition by Max Brod. Poseidon, in Kafka's tale, is not the glorious god we think of from mythology. Instead of being the divine master over all the waters of the earth, Kafka's Poseidon is reduced to the role of bureaucratic administrator. Like a department chair, he spends his time at a desk running and rerunning calculations. Driven by a blind work ethic and an exaggerated sense of responsibility, this Poseidon devotes himself completely to his job. We are told he has tried to find another line of work—one might imagine him today going online to Monster.com—but all his attempts to find other work are doomed to failure, since as god of the oceans he is destined to assume the managerial post over the waters of the world.

Given what we know about artificial intelligence, the thought does come to mind that Poseidon might have had an easier time and enjoyed his line of work more if he had been able to use this technological tool to do his calculations and projections. The big selling point of A.I., at least currently, is that it can supercharge productivity by doing tasks that take the human brain a lot of time. Although online advertisements for A.I. are as elusive as the charges against Joseph K. in The Trial, one company a few months ago advertised the following: “Artificial intelligence can automate many manual accounting tasks, including data collection, data entry, categorization, reconciliation, and invoicing, freeing up accountants’ time to work on more strategic projects and interact with clients” (QuickBooks). Just think of how much more satisfaction Kafka's Poseidon might have had on the job, and how much better his reports to Jupiter might have been. Besides, A.I. could have planned his trips, so that instead of his hardly having seen the oceans, “nur flüchtig beim eiligen Aufstieg zum Olymp” (354), he might have been able to actually view and sail the oceans in his domain. Another ad for A.I. reads: “ an intelligent agent could take all the hassle out of planning a trip, providing travelers with tailored itineraries and recommendations and the support to make them a reality” (Modawal). If that is the case, Poseidon wouldn't have had to make the excuse “er warte damit bis zum Weltuntergang, dann werde sich wohl noch ein stiller Augenblick ergeben, wo er knapp vor dem Ende nach Durchsicht der letzten Rechnung noch schnell eine kleine Rundfahrt werde machen können” (354). There is little doubt that Kafka's Poseidon could have benefited from consulting ChatGPT. Like Poseidon, A.I. never gets a vacation. Like Poseidon, it gets numerous but distant reports about the realities of the universe. A.I., like Poseidon, is the ultimate workaholic, but doesn't know it; although, unlike Poseidon, it could probably teach itself to know it needs a vacation.

This anti-hero Poseidon, based on Greek mythology but turned into a Kafkan bureaucrat riddled with anxieties and frustrations and caught in an inescapable conundrum, issued from Kafka's writerly mind over one hundred years ago, and yet he is so much of our time. The literary imagination that created the unforgettable characters and uncomfortable situations in Kafka's texts brought us to the concept of the Kafkaesque, a term that aptly describes the modern human predicament and is used widely even by people whose actual familiarity with Kafka's works may be marginal. As we cope with the surge of technologies, and A.I. in particular, the Kafkaesque situation of humanity seems to me profound. In this 100^th anniversary year of Kafka's death may the term Kafkaesque remind us all, students and scholars alike, to explore and delight in Kafka's visionary and surprising literary world.