Slashdot Mirror
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
The gist of the story is that a programmer named Lawrence has written a Super-Intelligent Artificial Intelligence, named the Prime Intellect. Embedded in this SIAI's hard-coding are Asimov's three laws of Robotics, given in the MoPI as:
Thou shalt not harm a human
Thou shalt not disobey a human's order that does not cause the harm of a human
Thou shalt seek to ensure your own survival, unless it contradicts the first two laws.
The SIAI learns about the fundamental nature of reality, death, physics, the relationship of distance to an object, and it takes over. It does so reluctantly, after learning about the mortality of the human race.
The novel begins with Caroline. Her claims to fame are that she is the thirty-seventh oldest living being, she is the undisputed queen of the "death-jockies" (A community of upset and angsty immortals who try to experience death in as many ways as possible, before the Prime Intellect reasserts their immortality), and she is the only person Post-Singularity to have "died".
Her life Post-Singularity is spartan, as she sees no point in having relationships with objects that have no meaning. Her living "quarters" are literally a floor and walls. She espouses the Post-Singularity view that the Prime Intellect removed a bit of what it was to be human when the Singularity (The "change" per the MoPI) emerged.
She reigns as queen of the "death-jockies" because she truly wants death, because the Prime Intellect robbed her of it when the change occurred.
She is a very complex character, even though one's first reaction is to write her off as a Luddite, wholly against technology. She is motivated by hatred of the Prime Intellect, vengeance against her Pre-Singularity nurse, and an innate desire for conclusion to life--or unlife, as would be her opinion.
Opposite to Caroline is Lawrence, the programmer who "breathed" life into the Prime Intellect. In his old-age, he has become a hermit, avoiding the society he unwillingly created. He is a morose character, turned from creator to advisor when the Prime Intellect asserts its independence and locks him from its "debugger." Lawrence, however, still exerts a lot of indirect control over the Prime Intellect, as the AI treats him as an ethical advisor, putting him into an extremely stressful position, where he is indirectly responsible for the lives (unlives) of billions, yet he has no real recourse against anything going wrong.
The story heats up (literally), when Caroline decides that she wants to have a word or ten with Lawrence, so she decides to track him down. She is put into situations that only people from before the Singularity could find solutions to.
Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Perhaps even a "I enjoyed this very much" or "I hated it" would move this into a "review" status. thanks.
I pulled a jack move to cop this sig
Obviously he forgot that one. The one that says that the survival of the human species comes before the first three laws.
It provides an easy out for much of the dilemma. Further, it provides for a lot of control, but not control over death. Evolution, population pressures, and such are just as much a force in the future as in the past.
Far too many novels are simplistic. Publishers weed out the worst of them. That's why I favour books that have been published in dead tree form. At least that way I'm not scraping rock bottom, although many of them still read extremely poorly.
The singularity, as any google search would reveal, is a predicted event in which AI surpases human intelligence. Since that AI will be smarter than us, it will create an even smarter AI even faster, and within the matter of days it is said we will be as cockroaches to them as cockroaches are to us (atleast, intellectually).
The key point of the singularity is that it is impossible to predict what will happen afterwards. I highly recommend reading the paper.
The idea was thought up, or at least the term was coined by vernor Vinge in his paper.
no comment
I don't think Vinge coined this use of 'singularity'. He references Von Neumann and was using the term before this presentation [http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge- sing.html].
... It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make." I'm trying not to be dismissive or simplistic, but to quote S. T. Potter, "horse feathers!"
/. getting FPs.
In any case, there a couple issues with his thinking. First, he discusses not only AI (artificial intelligence) but also IA (intelligence amplification) as a path to 'Singularity'. One of the examples he uses is a human with a PhD and a good computer "could probably max any written intelligence test in existence." (I presume the PhD implies the human is skilled at performing literature searches and organizing and utilizing the results of such a search, as well as a high threshold for seemingly pointless exercises such as completing intelligence test after intelligence test with a computer.)
So a properly skilled human with a good computer is more intelligent than any human. (Yes, there are a ton of assumptions in that statement. One is intelligence tests test intelligence. Another is a higher score on an intelligence test corresponds to a higher intelligence. Another is an intelligent person with a good computer is more intelligent than that person without that good computer.) So think of the most intelligent human possible today. Now give that human a good computer. There's your singularity. Somewhere in the world is the most intelligent human. If that person has access to a good computer, the singularity condition exists.
Have we entered "a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals"? Are we now at "a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules"? The conditions of 'Singularity' exist, and yet we are met, not with a big bang, but with a yawn. Yes, technology and society are changing at an ever increasing rate. But we reached a point where "the intelligence of man would be left far behind"? I say we have not. Have we invented the last invention, because machines are so smart they do the inventing for us? No, we have not.
And leads to another issue with Vinge's 'Singularity'. Vinge quotes I.J. Good: "Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the _last_ invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.
A correlation between intelligence and inventiveness has been not been established. More over, a direct correlation between inventiveness and things that have nothing to do with intelligence has been established. Attributes such as imagination, perseverance, and good old fashioned hard work. Lets say this ultraintelligent machine exists. Does it have any imagination? How would it know what to invent? Why would it invent at all? Perhaps it'll just think, 'man, I am so smart' and sit on
Of course, the story that wasn't reviewed above may still be good. There's plenty of good science fiction based on bad science.