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. 

"Never give up, never give in."

"You're running the wrong way!  Retreat in the other direction!"  

His Blueness, Yellow Submarine 

I retreated a little bit today.

And it was such a subtle retreat - all I did was buy three t-shirts, two black and one blue.  Just plain t-shirts, no messages, references or representation, just t-shirts, something to wear on those days when I don't want to have a dialogue about my choice of clothing. 

Because, you know, it's just easier sometimes. When I wear my Doctor Who-inspired "THE ANGELS HAVE THE PHONE BOX" t-shirt, it's not uncommon for people to ask me who my favourite Doctor* is. Given the nature of the fandom, I don't think it's a challenge (in the way that someone might ask the same question about my favourite player if I were to wear a Maple Leafs jersey) but every time I wear that t-shirt, I end up feeling that I need to have an answer ready, just in case.

Sometimes you don't even get that much of an opportunity to defend your t-shirt statement.  I recently decided to wear my Captain Canuck t-shirt as a patriotic gesture in support of the current economic struggle with the United States, and while crossing the street someone coming toward me on the crosswalk loudly shouted "FOR SHAME" as they passed me.  

But why?  Did they have a reading comprehension problem?  Did they think it was a Captain America t-shirt?  Did they prefer the original Richard Comely version of the Captain to the modernized one represented in the artwork?  Was it actually because of my NASA hat?  Had I not been burdened with a large and heavy bag of books purchased at the annual VPL sale, I would have turned around and requested an explanation.  As it was, I shrugged and continued on my way, but the encounter left me mildly disturbed for the rest of the day, as if I'd been slapped by a stranger without warning or apparent cause.

And then there's my stepfather-in-law, Steve.  Pleasant man, friendly, well spoken, but I learned some time ago not to wear any sort of merch that requires the least bit of explanation - I'm still not certain if his repeated "WHAT?" is a statement about the obscurity of my tastes or a comment on his hearing, but regardless, he always seems disappointed by my answers, as if he has evaluated my choice of lifestyles and somehow found it wanting.

But, regardless of losing a little battle today, I haven't given up.  The key to winning a war is to play the long game - tactics versus strategy.  Choose your battles, pick your battlegrounds, and accept that sometimes you may have to retreat, just to make sure that you can stay in the fight.

- Sid

* Since you've asked: original series, Tom Baker.  Reboot series, gosh, I know everyone loves David Tennant, but I have a definite soft spot for Matt Smith's nuanced interpretation of the last Time Lord.