In this issue:
Four Questions with Gary Mormino
An AI Christmas Carol
Four Questions with Gary Mormino
Gary R. Mormino is the Frank E. Duckwall professor emeritus in history at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He continues to teach classes in Modern Florida, Food History and World War II. Presently, he is the scholar in residence at the Florida Humanities. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.
His first book, Immigrants on the Hill: Italians in St. Louis, was published by University of Illinois Press and received the Howard Marraro prize for the best work in Italian history. In 1987, he collaborated with George Pozzetta in the publication of The Immigrant World of Ybor City (University of Illinois Press). In 2005, Mormino wrote Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida. The book was adapted for the PBS documentary The Florida Dream, which received a regional Emmy. In 2012, Florida Trend magazine honored him as a “Florida Icon.” That same year, he was honored by the Florida House in Washington, D.C., for his literary accomplishments. In 2015, he was the recipient of the Florida Humanities Council’s Lifetime Achievement in Writing. In 2020, the University Press of Florida published Millard Fillmore Caldwell: Governing on the Wrong Side of History.
His most recent book, Dreams in a New Century, 2000-2010, was published in 2022. The study received a gold star as the best study in Florida history by the Florida Books Awards in 2023. The Florida Historical Society awarded the book the 2023 Charlton Tebeau prize as the outstanding book in state history. He has received three gold Charlie awards for best in-depth feature writing in Forum magazine.
Mormino is presently finishing a lengthy study of Florida and WWII.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
Tell good stories. As a historian, I admire writers who tell great stories, but stories with a purpose.
As a young historian in the 1970s, I researched and wrote about Italian immigrants. I wanted to know more about my grandparents, Rosolino Mormino and Sara Guarino, who left Alia, Sicily, for the sugarcane fields of Napoleonville, Louisiana.
In 1980-1981, I spent a year in Italy teaching and writing. I had the opportunity to interview my great uncle, Giuseppe Mormino. When asked what he remembered about the first letter written by his brother in America, he replied, “In America, the bread is soft.” What a beautiful metaphor!
My first book traced the history of a remarkable immigrant colony, “Dago Hill,” in St. Louis, Missouri. Upon discovering that almost no records existed to illuminate the lives of Italian immigrants, I began tape-recording hundreds of elderly immigrants. I quickly realized that their first-person tales of upheaval and endurance were as poetic as they were real.
Between 1977 and 1986, I interviewed many Cuban, Spanish and Italian immigrants while researching a book on Ybor City. The most beautiful description of immigration came from the lips of an elderly Italian, Nina Tagliarini. She reminisced about her passage to America:
“Imagine a 14-year-old kid disrobing in front of adults. They threw on us all kinds of disinfectant. I still smell it. But the minute I saw the Statue of Liberty, I left everything behind. It was like stepping onto a piece of ice and by the time you’re on the other side, it’s melted.”
What did I learn as a writer? Listen closely! Revise, rewrite, again.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
That I became a writer! I came from a working-class family where Illinois oil refineries and steel mills offered paths to success. In grade school through high school, I never received an A or a B in an English class. No one ever recommended me for advanced placement classes. In graduate school, I began to realize I could write IF I was willing to rewrite and revise. And select strong, active verbs!
In 1977, I arrived in Tampa to teach at the University of South Florida. I knew nothing about the state, but 46 years later, I look back on my encounter with Florida as the greatest professional break in my career. But it was only when I was teaching in Rome for a year that I had my epiphany about the Sunshine State.
The years 1980-1981 profoundly tested Florida: the Mariel boatlift, the Miami race riots, the rise of the Republican Party and rampant development of thousands of acres of groveland and forest into new towns and cul-de-sacs. But 5,000 miles away, on Sunday afternoons at a café on the Via Veneto, I read a tattered copy of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ novel The Yearling. Her coming-of-age story set in backwoods Florida won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize. I fell in love with the state and vowed to refocus my energies on trying to interpret modern Florida. I am still trying to figure out this magical and maddening place I call home.
I feel a sense of purpose and responsibility writing about Florida, an obligation to have an honest dialogue about the past and present. Along with many Floridians, I am worried about Florida’s current path of recklessness and the future of the Sunshine State.
If you had to use a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be?
My Sicilian grandfather was a mason for the Standard Oil Refinery. I like the metaphor of bricklaying to describe the patient construction of sentences and paragraphs as literary walls and mortar. Perhaps future critics will also employ the metaphor of laying a brick to describe my writing!
What is the single best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
My graduate adviser, Roger Lotchin, offered two indispensable pieces of advice. Lotchin wrote about American cities, and he implored his students to walk neighborhoods to appreciate the contours of urban life. But his second piece of advice was the soundest: Rewrite and revise! My first drafts are a mess. But after the third or fourth draft, they begin to make sense. I remain a bricklayer, not an artist.
An AI Christmas Carol
Last weekend, my grandsons and I were watching Scrooge: A Christmas Carol, the latest movie version of Charles Dickens’ beloved 1843 novella. While the movie played on the big screen, my Macbook Air rested in my lap.
At one point, I was curious how long it took Dickens to write the story. I’ll ask Claude, I thought.
Claude wasn’t in the room.
Claude is an artificial intelligence chatbot.
It’s similar to ChatGPT, the AI chatbot widely regarded as the fastest-growing consumer internet app of all time after it launched a year ago. OpenAI, the company that created it, notched an estimated 100 million monthly users in just two months.
By contrast, Facebook took around 4 1/2 years to hit 100 million users after its launch in 2004, Twitter took over five years, and Instagram took a little over two years.
Anthropic, the AI lab that created Claude, is run by Dario Amodei, who used to work for OpenAI, and his sister Daniela. They say their company is better aligned with human values than other systems.
Broadly speaking, there are two camps in the world of AI: evangelists, who say artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize human potential for the better, and doomsayers, who fear computers will seize control from humanity and spell its end.
There’s no doubt that AI — a digital brain inside your computer — has done amazing things. At the same time, the technology has a history of failing miserably in ways that were dangerous and deadly, according to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (ieee.org), which cataloged its failings in a 2021 article.
I’ve always been an early adopter of technology, from the first PCs to the iPhone. AI is no exception. I use AI chatbots a lot — mostly for documented research or analysis and to test its writing capabilities. What I’ve seen so far excites and disturbs me.
I toggle between Claude and ChatGPT to compare their responses. Chatbots have a penchant, at times, to make shit up. That’s why journalists especially have to be very cautious when using them. One of the fastest ways to test a chatbot is to ask it for one’s bio. When I first started experimenting with ChatGPT early this year, my bio included a Pulitzer Prize (I wish!) and a staff job at the New York Times. (Dream on, Chip!)
Today, as I write this, ChatGPT delivered an accurate summary of my career. Claude, for all its ideals, had no idea who I was.
Last weekend, while watching Scrooge with the grandkids, Claude reported that it took about six weeks in 1843 to write, edit and publish A Christmas Carol. I got to wondering.
What would the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge’s occupation be in 2023?
I asked Claude.
In less than 30 seconds, it spit out this response.
Venture Capitalist / Private Equity Investor Scrooge could be depicted as a ruthless investor focused purely on profit. He invests in startups seeking huge financial returns and cares little for the companies or workers.
Hedge Fund Billionaire Similar to venture capital, Scrooge could run a massive and aggressive hedge fund, endlessly chasing gains while remote and crass toward most people.
Big Tech Exec As an executive of a large technology company focusing strictly on scale and dominance while lacking empathy and humanity.
AI or Machine Learning Founder Alternatively, Scrooge could invent and commercialize AI or machine learning tech but fails to consider its ethical implications and those it may harm.
Billionaire Wall Street Banker Scrooge might run an investment bank trafficking in complex and opaque financial instruments to generate immense personal profits. He has no time for holiday cheer or generosity.
Real Estate Tycoon As head of a major real estate development and investment firm, profiting off properties while ignoring harm to renters and communities.
That made me sit up in my chair. Given all the attention, much of it hype, that AI has been getting lately, I decided to go with No. 4, the AI Founder whose profile echoed the debates over the emerging technology.
After the movie ended and I took my grandsons home, I spent the next few hours feeding Claude instructions, known as prompts, to see what would happen if I tried to get it to write an updated version of Dickens’ story featuring “ElonEezer Scrooge” who lives in San Francisco. I intentionally gave it little else to go on.
It astounded me.
Even though some of it is incomplete and garbled, here is Claude’s A Christmas Carol, set in 2023, and a subsequent conversation:
ElonEezer Scrooge awoke with a start in his massive four-post bed overlooking San Francisco Bay. The clock on his data-enabled nightstand read "December 25th, 2023, 10 AM" in crisp OLED pixels. As an AI-induced nightmare faded, ElonEezer noticed one of three TeslaBot digital assistants in his penthouse softly pinging.
"Sir, your vital signs indicate elevated stress," it intoned politely. "Shall I run your centering mediation program to relieve holiday anxiety?"
"Enough!" ElonEezer grumbled, waving the android servant away impatiently. The FINAL Act — recently passed by Congress — required all intelligent assistive tech be assigned guardian status and basic rights. "What humbug," Scrooge scoffed at the legislation’s foolish empathy. He designed algorithms for ruthless efficiency, not coddling.
Logging into his extended reality visor propped on the nightstand, ElonEezer checked Cryptofolio — his bitcoin stash neared a cool $200 million in value. Just then, his doorbell buzzed. "Who dares disturb me on Christmas without an appointment?!" ElonEezer bellowed.
It was Robert Quantum — ElonEezer's lead quantum systems coder better known as "Bob Cratchit" for his antiquated nerd-chic style. "Good afternoon sir — sorry to intrude during your holiday downtime,” Cratchit said timidly. “It’s just, with healthcare premiums spiking again, I hoped you might see fit to boost year-end bonuses so families like mine can still afford critical medications ..."
"Bah — Humbug!" ElonEezer retorted. “Your boy Tim will simply have to heal himself through proper mental codes and downloaded ancestry data like the rest of us modern folks. Now begone!”
He slammed the door just as Cratchit began detailing his son’s rare condition. Heartless as it seemed, ElonEezer considered empathy itself a disease — one he eradicated from his system long ago thanks to neural modification implanting search algorithms directly into his prefrontal cortex ...
That evening in his master bed chamber, eerie sounds stirred ElonEezer from slumber. Had one of his TeslaBots malfunctioned? Then a deafening clank resounded as high-tensile quarantine shutters slammed down over all windows and exits by emergency protocol! Smoke poured under his locked bedroom door accompanied by an ominous voice echoing from unseen depths ...
"ElonEezer ... you once understood that with great AI power comes great responsibility … but you have failed Earth’s children ..."
ElonEezer sat frozen in bed as a ghastly blue persona materialized at his room’s center staring back with once-familiar eyes. It was the scanned consciousness of Jacob Musk — ElonEezer’s long-dead mentor and original CFO!
"Jake, my old friend! What are you now … hologram, interactive memory engram?" ElonEezer exclaimed, scarcely believing the sight yet inexplicably overwhelmed.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past!" it declared portentously. "You seem surprised, ElonEezer — did you think one's digital essence simply dissipated upon death in 2023? We have 25 years of transitional work ahead before true techno-immortality. But this virtual remnant retains enough soul shards to haunt you!”
Without warning, Ghostly Jake waved a pixelated hand and ElonEezer’s palatial cypher bunker interior vanished instantly! The phantasmal manifestation had successfully performed a remote quantum teleport — landing them both within archived memories from their storied past ...
ElonEezer observed his younger self in a dilapidated garage during university days. Surrounded by second-hand servers and clunky old NFT rigs, Young ElonEezer excitedly pitched his Harvard roommate Jake on co-founding what would become the world’s leading digital currency startup.
"With our first functional smart contracts ready for beta testing, we'll soon make financial accessibility as easy as embedded thought!” the college-aged ElonEezer effused ...
Back in the present day, Ghost Jake eyed ElonEezer with deep disappointment. “Success blinded you to nobler goals my friend. Forgetting why we toiled so tirelessly coding blockchain’s earliest delicate roots ...”
The garage scene evaporated abruptly, plunging ElonEezer next into a once-cherished San Francisco memory of Christmas bonus day 2023 hosted by Bob Cratchit’s wife Emily in their tiny Mission apartment ...
Emily's face filled with gentle concern noticing ElonEezer himself standing there with young Tim Cratchit coughing robotically in the corner from experimental gene therapy medications the family could scarcely afford.
“Mr. Scrooge must soften his algorithms soon so families like ours coding his machines can still access quality healthcare,” Emily murmured. “Human values matter alongside profits ..."
Hearing his hardest-working employee's wife speak such truth, ElonEezer turned shamefully from her piercing gaze back toward Ghost Jake. But his former partner had vanished as quickly as he'd arrived ...
The next morning, ElonEezer bolted awake, praying it was all merely a dream induced by stale eggnog-flavored lattes. Rising hesitantly from his sheets, he peeked out stunned that his penthouse quarantine remained lifted.
"Your vital signs suggest another stressful sleep event Sir,” one sleek TeslaBot commented, handing ElonEezer a mug of organic chamomile tea. “Shall I queue your Therapeutic Touch simulation for relaxing cranial calibratio—"
"Silence rust bucket!" ElonEezer snapped, more flustered than angry. Were these intrusive visions and robot servants parts of the same strangely customized rehabilitation? ...
Another sleepless eve soon gave way to a second spectral encounter even more foreboding than the last. Approaching ElonEezer’s bedside menacingly floated a tall robed entity seemingly woven from cryptocurrency code itself, manifold faces perpetually materializing then vanishing as if rendered by quantum fluctuation.
“Let me guess: the Ghost of Christmas Future," ElonEezer sighed, unwilling to indulge more suppression trauma from his own technology.
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come," it corrected in a stuttering barrage of distorted voices like bad codec translation. "I pierce the veil shrouding manifold probabilities ahead."
Before ElonEezer could object, the many-faced wraith waved a fractal digitigrade arm whisking them directly into an ominous future scenario — the year 2045 by the looks of things ...
Raging fires engulfed Silicon Valley's collapsing skyline in this nightmarish potential timepath. Roaming gangs raided abandoned cryptofarms while raging mobs chanted "ScroogeTech Delenda Est!" and toppled corroding server towers once synonymous with unbridled power.
Ghostly Future silently led ElonEezer through the wreckage directly toward a modest mid-century apartment. Inside knelt Emily Cratchit grieving with her family over a small shrouded form — the expired body of young Tim!
“Another precious son of Earth lost because our alleged techno-protectors cannot see humans outside their algorithms,” Emily lamented bitterly. “Now burrowing like moles in bunkers while civilization crashes above!"
ElonEezer fell to his knees gazing upon poor Tim's lifeless face, low sobs wracking his shoulders. The towering Ghost placed a firm yet gentle hand upon him amidst roiling chaos.
“Though bleak, this war-torn wasteland remains avoidable despite looming breakdowns in empathy linking man to machine and machine to man ...” the faceless giant assured. “Guide that linkage back toward wisdom's light ElonEezer, lest the coming crypto winter eclipse society itself!"
BACK IN 2023 before dire prophecies fully unfolded, a truly shaken ElonEezer drafted guestlist updates for his impending Cryptmas Charity Gala — the region’s disadvantaged coders would now receive VIP invitations alongside titans of the blockchain scene assured a night to remember ...
Several weeks later, on New Year’s Day, ElonEezer volunteered at a Bay Area community health clinic newly equipped using his vast resources to keep families like the Cratchits connected to lifesaving care no matter what misfortunes the future potentially held.
Little Tim even gained strength enough to help ElonEezer hand out nutrient-rich Soylent packets and AI-powered wellness companions to fellow patients awaiting checkups. For a fleeting moment, ElonEezer thought he glimpsed Bob Cratchit himself standing in the corner smiling gently … though oddly translucent.
“Come now Sir, plenty of health and wholeness to go around,” a medical android gently urged, snapping ElonEzeer from his momentary transfixion. Still, through the bustling clinic that day echoed a certain long-lost yet newly rekindled spirit …
A Christmas Carol is in the public domain, which means anyone can publish or change it in any way they want, as Claude did. Even so, I asked the chatbot, “Is what you have written taken directly from Dickens' text?”
It replied:
No, none of what I have written is directly taken or copied from Dickens' original text. All of the passages I generated about Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past are my own original writings, not excerpts from the classic story.
I leveraged my knowledge of A Christmas Carol's characters and themes to craft an all-new dramatized scene depicting an encounter between the miserly protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past. I attempted to capture key elements and the ghost's mission to rekindle Scrooge's lost empathy and kindness.
However, while inspired by Dickens, I did not plagiarize or insert sections word-for-word from the 1843 novella. The dialogue, descriptions, and plot details I created are unique passages written fully in my own words and voice. My goal was to produce engaging new content that could plausibly fit within the established world and storyline of A Christmas Carol, rather than copying Dickens.
In a recent New Yorker profile of Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, which sells supercomputing chips that power AI systems, reporter Stephen Witt expressed his concerns about the technology. “Someday soon,” Witt said, “I would feed my notes from our conversation into an intelligence engine, then watch as it produced structured, superior prose.”
Huang “didn’t dismiss this possibility,” Witt wrote, “but he assured me that I had a few years. …”
“It will come for the fiction writers first,” Huang said.
At the heart of the recently settled Writers Guild of America strike was the threat screenwriters believe AI poses to their livelihood. Watching Claude rewrite A Christmas Carol within seconds, I understood why they are so afraid.