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Writing in the 1960s, Primo Levi anticipated today’s LLMs
Mar. 29, 2025. 4 mins. read.
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In the sixties, Primo Levi imagined LLM-like AI that can write human language and some typical social reactions.
In a speech given in Austin on March 12 at SXSW 2025, legendary science fiction author Bruce Sterling said that, “Primo Levi’s historic ‘Versificatore’ is a prophetic vision of Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence.” Sterling has also published the text of the speech, titled ‘How to Rebuild an Imaginary Future‘.
‘Il Versificatore’ (‘The Versifier’) is a short by Primo Levi, written in screenplay format and included in the collection ‘Storie Naturali‘ (1966). An English translation is available in ‘The Complete Works of Primo Levi‘ (2015).
Primo Levi (1919-1987) was an Italian writer and chemist, best known as a powerful voice from the Holocaust. He endured almost one year in Auschwitz. His best known novel shares his Auschwitz story in clear, calm words. It shows human strength and weakness under evil. Readers feel the camp’s cold reality through his eyes. Then he wrote a novel about his long journey home after freedom and many other works, often inspired by science. His style is simple yet sharp, blending science and storytelling.
“Primo Levi’s imaginary ‘Versificatore,'” Sterling explains, “is a cybernetic, desktop, mass-manufactured business machine that can write Italian poetry. The Versificatore works with prompts, very much like ChatGPT.”
Levi wrote the story in 1960. “It’s quite amazing how well Levi understood the future human reactions to a novelty like an AI that can write human language,” says Sterling. “It turns out, sixty year later, that Primo Levi was quite right about the prospect of machines with an astonishing command of human language. They’re very much here, and wreaking predictable havoc.”
How it works
The versifier compose poetry following user specifications like literary genre, tone, style etc. It is not yet creative like a great human poet: “it has less imagination, so to speak. But it’s all you need for routine jobs, and actually, with just a little effort from the operator, it’s capable of true wonders.”
All the user has to do “is set the ‘commands’: there are four entries,” enthuses a poet who is considering purchasing the machine, reading the instruction manual. “The first is for the subject, the second is for the genre, the third is for the metrical form, the fourth (which is optional) determines the era of composition. The machine does the rest; it’s marvelous!”
The secretary of the poet wonders:
“But a poet, an artist like you… how can you agree to bring a machine in here… it can be as modern as you like, but it’s still a machine… how can it have your taste, your sensibility?”
However, the machine is quite smart. If there’s no word that rhymes in the intended way, the Versifier is able to use poetic license and modify words to rhyme well: “it will automatically search among the words listed in its dictionary and will choose first the words that are best suited in terms of meaning, and around these it will construct the appropriate verses. If none of these words fit, the machine resorts to license, which means it will adjust the words available, or coin new ones. The user can determine the degree of ‘licentiousness’ of the composition by adjusting the red knob located inside the casing to the left.”
The funniest part of Levi’s story is when the Versifier starts composing a hendecasyllabic sonnet based on certain prompts. It starts well:
I like to revisit these lanes, dank and old,
the pavement now rubble, heavy the air
with autumn-ripe figs, their smell rather bold
mingled with gutter musk and some to spare.
But then there’s a problem:
We seem to be blocked by rhymes made up of “air.”
And we have become like beggars so beware
Mr. Sinsone is aware of the scare
Come now with your tools and set right this affair
Change the fuses with this here serial numbair
Eightthousandsixhundredandseventeenare
And please do take care when you make the repair.
Differences and parallels
The poet is impressed that the Versifier is able to correctly diagnose the cause of the malfunction and call for help in verses. Of course, the poet ends up purchasing it, and he has been happy with the machine ever since. At the end of the story, the poet has taught the Versifier to compose prose as well.
It appears that, writing in the stone age of the sixties, Primo Levi anticipated many features of today’s large language models (LLMs). He also anticipated some typical social reactions to LLM technology.
Of course, there are also important differences. Levi’s story is set in the world of the sixties and reflects the reality of that time. The TV adaptation shows the Versifier in a typical office environment of the sixties. The Versifier looks vaguely futuristic, but Levi couldn’t have imagined the huge data centers in the cloud that host today’s LLMs.
Yet, the parallels and similarities are perhaps sufficient to justify renaming LLMs ‘Leviathans’.
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