I have a hard time suspending disbelief with sci-fi these days. It's really hard to imagine any believable future along current trend lines; either you contrive a reason why AI didn't become a thing (1), or you have to explain why humans are doing anything - piloting a starship, science, exploration, etc. (2)
(1) Butlerian Jihad. Sanderson's Skyward at least had a reason.
(2) Banks's Culture had a possible future. I'm sure there are others, but not many.
I think about this a lot, and while I have tons of near future sci-fi ideas (which probably would have seemed very far future, 10-20, years ago), I just can't conceive of anything much farther out. I guess that's why they call it the "singularity".
I think you suffer from Fisher's 'capitalist realism':
>the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.
AI from the past seems more like it’s based on the computers of the time - the AIs seem to be very logical, never make mistakes and act like they’re an expertly programmed bunch of switch statements and ifs. Whereas modern AI is based on human text and so the models have human biases and do things like swear in their chain-of-thought and sometimes make errors for no reason at all.
Not mentioning Peter Watts here is criminal, because he came unnervingly close to nailing it. The voice of Rorschach in Blindsight is very similar to early LLMs. And, well, hopefully the dead internet of Starfish doesn't turn out to be a prophecy but I'm getting nervous.
The sci-fi story that I constantly find myself thinking about when I read about real-world AI developments is Ra, by qntm/Sam Hughes: https://qntm.org/ra
I'm glad to see Aurora (by KSR) up there. It's a great sci-fi story overall, but for this topic the "waking up" of the AI and the entire evolution as we get to know it, and hear its voice is absolutely great. Highly recommend it, if you haven't read it.
It's interesting how the Hard SF authors (at least, the ones I read) had poorer predictions than the more fantasy-like ones. Asimov, who was considered a giant of the field, thought that AI (robots) would have difficulty with ambiguity, creativity, and lying. This trend extends all the way to Star Trek's Data. Looking back on it, this view was probably based on Asimov consciously or unconsciously basing his robots on the more autistic of the scientists that he knew.
Whereas fantasy authors write stuff like "a sufficiently large pile of books becomes an intelligence" (Pratchett) and that's pretty much what's happened...
I think you’ve misread Asimov. Asimov highlighted the problem of alignment before it had a name and generated stories out of rule-based attempts to solve alignment.
I don’t recall his robots having problems with creativity nor lying - precisely Daniel in the post-Foundation books was found to have developed a zeroth law which he used not only to lie but also to creatively get the universe back on Seldon’s plan after the Mule disrupted it. There were also stories in the robot/Spacer era pre-Foundation where robots lied precisely because they had to to save a human life or themselves. And the robots were creative - the human inspector those series followed relied on the creativity of his robot companion (Daniel) to help him.
AI attempts at the time were based on modelling and logic, not machine learning. Whereas soft SF authors were just like "there are people made of computer chips".
It's gonna be cool to reevaluate that in few years. Different stories might move to the top as real world AIs capabilities grow and new behaviors manifest.
> I agree with Ursula Le Guin that “Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.” To me, the interesting parts of science fiction isn’t how accurately it extrapolates into the future, but rather, given a future circumstance, how might be?
"""Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying.
The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don’t recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It’s none of their business. All they’re trying to do is tell you what they’re like, and what you’re like—what’s going on—what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look!"""
Le Guin's view, as I understand it, is that science fiction is about describing the present, even when it takes place in the future.
I spot-checked "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress". It ranks a 2 for scaling, but according to the guidelines it should rank 0, because "A giant computer that merely stores more records doesn’t count for much. Neither does a magical threshold where the machine suddenly wakes up." and Mike's description is literally that he woke up when he reached that threshold.
I have a hard time suspending disbelief with sci-fi these days. It's really hard to imagine any believable future along current trend lines; either you contrive a reason why AI didn't become a thing (1), or you have to explain why humans are doing anything - piloting a starship, science, exploration, etc. (2)
(1) Butlerian Jihad. Sanderson's Skyward at least had a reason.
(2) Banks's Culture had a possible future. I'm sure there are others, but not many.
I think about this a lot, and while I have tons of near future sci-fi ideas (which probably would have seemed very far future, 10-20, years ago), I just can't conceive of anything much farther out. I guess that's why they call it the "singularity".
A huge problem with SF today is that it's tough to even imagine an upbeat future. That's rather discouraging. SF cannot tell us what to aim for.
As to prediction, there were some very accurate early hits. A Logic Named Joe
SF hit a dead end when interplanetary exploration discovered that off-Earth real estate in this solar system really sucks.
Have you read the Bobiverse series? It goes into some of these themes, and explores AI, post humanity and so on.
> or you have to explain why humans are doing anything
Jack Williamson made a case for humans resisting doing nothing: With Folded Hands ... (1947) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands_...
Give Accelerando by Charles Stross a read. The future isn't over yet.
I think you suffer from Fisher's 'capitalist realism':
>the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.
Star Trek and Banks' are post-capitalist futures.
I'm saying that I haven't really seen (almost) anybody present a coherent future. Not just me.
Star Trek, as much as I love it, does not really grapple with AI heavily, and I already mentioned Banks.
Star Trek is easy to "imagine", but also easy to invalidate.
The only slightly fleshed out bit of Star Trek is the military, not the planetary society.
AI from the past seems more like it’s based on the computers of the time - the AIs seem to be very logical, never make mistakes and act like they’re an expertly programmed bunch of switch statements and ifs. Whereas modern AI is based on human text and so the models have human biases and do things like swear in their chain-of-thought and sometimes make errors for no reason at all.
Not mentioning Peter Watts here is criminal, because he came unnervingly close to nailing it. The voice of Rorschach in Blindsight is very similar to early LLMs. And, well, hopefully the dead internet of Starfish doesn't turn out to be a prophecy but I'm getting nervous.
Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age (a young lady's illustrated primer) ≈ LLMs + Intelligent UI (OpenAI)
The sci-fi story that I constantly find myself thinking about when I read about real-world AI developments is Ra, by qntm/Sam Hughes: https://qntm.org/ra
I'm glad to see Aurora (by KSR) up there. It's a great sci-fi story overall, but for this topic the "waking up" of the AI and the entire evolution as we get to know it, and hear its voice is absolutely great. Highly recommend it, if you haven't read it.
There's also "Destination: Void" by Frank Herbert.
vernor vinge bubble in time series gives a lot of food for thought without overly patronizing or moralizing
This goes so hard with numbers without even a passing mention of how the author actually read the books. AI wrote this.
Iain M Banks' Culture series seem to have got a lot right.
That jump in computer intelligence, so soon, is completely surprising. And I bet most actual sci fi fans would agree.
I used to dismiss anything near-future involving any robot or AI you could just talk to. Now it exists. Unfathomable.
What AI?
It's interesting how the Hard SF authors (at least, the ones I read) had poorer predictions than the more fantasy-like ones. Asimov, who was considered a giant of the field, thought that AI (robots) would have difficulty with ambiguity, creativity, and lying. This trend extends all the way to Star Trek's Data. Looking back on it, this view was probably based on Asimov consciously or unconsciously basing his robots on the more autistic of the scientists that he knew.
Whereas fantasy authors write stuff like "a sufficiently large pile of books becomes an intelligence" (Pratchett) and that's pretty much what's happened...
I think you’ve misread Asimov. Asimov highlighted the problem of alignment before it had a name and generated stories out of rule-based attempts to solve alignment.
I don’t recall his robots having problems with creativity nor lying - precisely Daniel in the post-Foundation books was found to have developed a zeroth law which he used not only to lie but also to creatively get the universe back on Seldon’s plan after the Mule disrupted it. There were also stories in the robot/Spacer era pre-Foundation where robots lied precisely because they had to to save a human life or themselves. And the robots were creative - the human inspector those series followed relied on the creativity of his robot companion (Daniel) to help him.
AI attempts at the time were based on modelling and logic, not machine learning. Whereas soft SF authors were just like "there are people made of computer chips".
Asimov’s AI was based around the positronic brain which simulated organic neurons if I recall correctly.
Mid-20th-century hard sci-fi authors were not sufficiently Bitter-Lesson-pilled. Which is unsurprising, that essay was written in 2019.
It's gonna be cool to reevaluate that in few years. Different stories might move to the top as real world AIs capabilities grow and new behaviors manifest.
Yeah, The Terminator scored low on this rating for now.
Everybody needs to go read Asimov's Someday. Now's a good time, go do it.
I think this quote is cherry-picked:
> I agree with Ursula Le Guin that “Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.” To me, the interesting parts of science fiction isn’t how accurately it extrapolates into the future, but rather, given a future circumstance, how might be?
You can read her views at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/342990/the-left-hand... .
"""Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying.
The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don’t recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It’s none of their business. All they’re trying to do is tell you what they’re like, and what you’re like—what’s going on—what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look!"""
Le Guin's view, as I understand it, is that science fiction is about describing the present, even when it takes place in the future.
I spot-checked "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress". It ranks a 2 for scaling, but according to the guidelines it should rank 0, because "A giant computer that merely stores more records doesn’t count for much. Neither does a magical threshold where the machine suddenly wakes up." and Mike's description is literally that he woke up when he reached that threshold.
It's on the first page. https://archive.org/details/bwb_S0-DFY-783/page/8/mode/2up?q...
The growth in Mike's abilities is not from putting new hardware online, but because he matures like a person does, for example, https://archive.org/details/bwb_S0-DFY-783/page/64/mode/2up?...
I also don't like the omission of Wyoh's contribution to Mike's training.