• @Soyweiser
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    191 month ago

    Cstross was right! You tell everybody. Listen to me. You’ve gotta tell them! AGI is corporations! We’ve gotta stop them somehow!

    • @Soyweiser
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      71 month ago

      (Before I get arrested for anti-corporate terrorism, this was a joke about soylent green).

    • @smiletolerantly
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      23 days ago

      This is the first mention of Accelerando I’ve seen in the wild. (Assuming it is. I’m not sure.)

      • @Soyweiser
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        323 days ago

        It was more Soylent green, but it also is partially based on (friend of the club) the writings of C Stross yes. I think he also has a written lecture on corps being slow paper clipping AGI somewhere.

        • @smiletolerantly
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          222 days ago

          That is a beautiful comparison. Terrifying, but beautifully fitting.

          I read Stross right after Banks. I think if I hadn’t, I’d be an AI-hype-bro. Banks it the potential that could be, Stross is what we’ll inevitably turn AI into.

          • @gerikson
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            222 days ago

            Banks neatly sidesteps the “AI will inevitably kill us” scenario by making the Minds keep humans around for amusement/freshness. Part of the reasons for the Culture-Idiran war in Consider Phlebas and Look to Windward was that the Idirans did not want Minds in charge of their society.

            • @smiletolerantly
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              222 days ago

              Noone was trying to force that on them though, the actual reason IIRC correctly that Idirans had a religious imperative for expansion, and the Culture had a moral imperative to prevent other sentients’ suffering at the hands of the Idirans.

              IMO he mostly sidestepped the issue by clarifying that this is NOT a future version of “us”

              • @gerikson
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                222 days ago

                OK I misremembered that part. It makes sense that after suffering trillions of losses the Culture would take steps to prevent the Idirans from doing it again.

                And by “us” I meant fleshy meatbags, as opposed to Minds. Although in Excession he does raise the issue that there might be “psychotic” Minds. Gray Area’s heart(?) is in the right place but it’s easy to imagine them becoming a vigilante and pre-emptively nuking an especially annoying civilization.

                • @smiletolerantly
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                  122 days ago

                  Yep. They leave us alone so we’ll function as a control group. This way contact can later point at us and go “look! That’s what happens if we don’t intervene!”

          • flere-imsaho
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            22 days ago

            stross’ artificial intelligences are very unlike corporations though, and different between the books. the eschaton ai in singularity sky is quite benevolent, if a bit harsh; the ai civilization in saturn’s children is on the other hand very humanlike (and the primary reason there are no meatsacks in saturn’s children et al. is that humans enslaved and abused the intelligences they created).