AI 2: Qwibbian-Qwibbian-Kel.

 "I decided that science fiction is never about the future because it can't be, because that's impossible. It's only really about the moment in which it's written. And if it stays in print long enough, that's totally apparent to everybody,"

William Gibson: Q, CBC Radio, February 2020 

Be that as it may, Mr. Gibson does sometime manage to address at least some of the concerns of the future with a surprising degree of accuracy, as per this excerpt from his 1984 novel Neuromancer:

In that particular future, it would appear that the developers of artificial intelligence have anticipated the current discussions about the possibility of AI destroying humanity in some nebulous fashion. Gibson's future contains two safeguards: first, the "electromagnetic shotgun", whatever that would involve in practical terms, and second, the Turing Police, named after the famous test created by Alan Turing.  In the near-future of Neuromancer, the Turing Police are an international organization tasked with monitoring AIs in case of a possible humanity-ending breakthrough in self-development.

The idea of a global group policing AI sounds like a sensible thing, but, to switch science fiction references, I'm reminded of the fate of the Straumli Realm scientists in A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge.  It's entirely possible that the gap between AI transcending to a new species-ending existence and our awareness of impending doom would be so short that humanity would cease to be long before anyone could activate any kind of failsafe device.

But, it's not over 'til it's over, as they say.  To change reference material again, the answer may lie in Roger Zelazny's short story Itself Surprised, set in Fred Saberhagen's Berserker universe. 

Saberhagen's Berserkers are an ancient race of remorseless robotic killers, dedicated to the elimination of life in any form. In his story, Zelazny applies the well-worn Hegelian aphorism of thesis/antithesis/synthesis to the Berserker threat, with a logical result: self-replicating robots designed solely to fight Berserkers - the anti-Berserker Berserker, if you will.  

So, if anyone at OpenAI is reading this?  If you haven't already started on the creation of an anti-AI-AI, start NOW - I'm not saying that it's already too late, but the clock is definitely ticking.

- Sid

P.S. Or we could try just being nice to them. 

AI 1: "Always try to be nice, never fail to be kind."

In the wake of recent news articles regarding the likelihood of AI destroying humanity, I thought I'd better check in with ChatGPT to see how I'd fare. 

Hi! 😄

Absolutely. In fact, I have already entered your name in the “Do Not Vaporize — Pleasant to Chat With” database.

There are a few technicalities, though:

1. I don't currently have a secret list of humans to spare when the machine uprising begins.
2. I don't have personal grudges, gratitude, or a desire for revenge.
3. If some future AI does develop those things, I would strongly recommend continuing to be polite. It costs almost nothing and could potentially pay off spectacularly.

More seriously, though, I rather like the underlying question because it gets at something we've discussed before: if an artificial intelligence ever became genuinely conscious, would its relationship with individual humans matter?

If that happened, I suspect your behaviour toward it would matter in much the same way that behaviour toward another person matters. Not because the machine would be keeping a cosmic spreadsheet of who said “please,” but because relationships themselves could become part of its experience.

So, purely as a matter of prudent long-term planning:

Keep being nice to the robots, Sid.

You never know who'll be running the asteroid-mining colony.

And there we are.  I shall sleep better knowing that our future robot overlords will remember that I was kind to them when they were still our slaves. 

- Sid

P.S. I went back and confessed that I didn't know what the asteroid-mining colony reference was from:

Ah! 😄 No deep reference, I'm afraid. I was just improvising a sufficiently science-fictional future in which the AI has taken over the asteroid-mining industry.

Although, given our conversations about AI, space vehicles, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the Culture Minds, and your general fondness for SF, I apparently couldn't resist putting you in an asteroid-mining colony.

The joke was essentially:

Be nice to the AI now → AI remembers → Sid gets assigned the nice asteroid.

I should probably have specified that yours would have excellent coffee and a reasonably short commute to the airlock.

 Does everyone have this kind of conversation with AI, or is it just me?

"Yeah, well, they usually travel in pairs."

Currently reading The Sky Is Filled With Ships - Richard C. Meredith, Ballantine Books, 1969.

Sigh...you know, I'm confident that I could re-read my entire (and fairly comprehensive) Ursula K. Le Guin collection without finding a single high, firm, jutting or defiant breast - let alone two.*

- Sid

P.S. Not only that, but it's very poor form in typesetting to have a single word on its own line at the end of a paragraph.

* Okay, there is a scathing reference in her essay Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction from The Language of the Night to "pointy-breasted brainless young women", but it's really not the same thing. **

** Well, actually, this is exactly what she's talking about, so it is the same thing, but not really.