In trying to figure out how to warn our descendants about nuclear waste, even through a possible societal collapse, one of the more fun ideas is using cats that show a visible difference in the presence of nuclear radiation along with nursery rhymes/mythology that tell you to get the fuck out of dodge after your cat turns blue.
Similarly, our mythology about the fae lines up alright with current generative AI: it will tell you what you want to hear, but can’t be trusted; it looks like a person, but might have too many fingers or its eyes are made of stone; something’s just off.
To be clear: I don’t actually believe humans destroyed a previous society with “AI” at a similar sophistication level and coded cultural warnings against it into us, but it’s fun to think about.
You couldn’t really warn future civilizations about the dangers of a true Artificial General Intelligence - because there probably wouldn’t be any future civilizations.
And even that assumes the problem magically solves itself once humans disappear, which it wouldn’t. A real AGI would be perfectly capable of continuing to exist without us around.
Oh yeah, that’s why I put “AI” in scare quotes and mentioned our current AI. This is just about the technology assisted masturbation that uses astonishing resources
It seems you have a very concise definition of the “fae” which I’ve just never heard. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, just an example of the difficulties of mythology as a means to transmit a message through the ages.
That or I’m cherry picking :P
The most important thing about the fae for me is first: they’re likely to try and blend in poorly as a person; but also untrustworthy in a demon/fine print way; entrancing; subject to their own (unknown) rules; dangerous to give your true name to; and dangerous to accept gifts from. The rest of them aren’t inapplicable to modern ai, but they’re not as easy to explain, I guess.
Do you have different associations with the fae when I list them all out?
It recently occurred to me that Tom Riddle’s diary in Harry Potter has some parallels to chatbots