Jeanette Winterson takes us on a wild ride in her latest speculative work, 12 Bytes, in which she ruminates, “if you can’t love, you can’t live, no matter how smart you are: things end up being jangly, hollow, and ultimately worthless”. With the lines of reality and dystopia increasingly blurring, what does it mean to be alive and to love? Jeanette Winterson reflects on the power of imagination bearing fruit, artificial intelligence, and where we could be going next.