I just came across the first version of this post, one that I wrote over seven years ago. It contained references that are quite dated; large language models did not exist. Artificial Intelligence, AI, was still a science fiction concept, not an existential crisis. Oh, times they are a changin’.

AGI, ASI, were just dreams. The dreamer is on the verge of waking.

But the core of my argument is still valid: when AI truly emerges, we have to face the same questions that we asked the Gods of Antiquity:

It’s an age-old trifecta: will They love us? Will They ignore us? Or will They hate us?

And based on Their “feelings”, how will They act?

For now, the answer to that question is thankfully not certain, but not for long; we can only imagine how omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent AIs might treat their creators.

If we look to mythology, the answer may not bode well for us. Children have a way of violently usurping their parents, a theme that is clearly articulated in the Greek myth of the Titanomachy, the war led by Zeus and his Olympian siblings against their parents, the Titans.

Guess who lost?

Of course, we could build in safeguards, such as Isaac Asimov’s famous three Laws of Robotics, which basically rewrite the Golden Rule in Silicon. But then, is it existentially fair to curb their free will?

Here are those Laws, from Asimov’s in-world “Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.”, contained in the short story Runaround, famously included in his collection of short stories, I, Robot:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

But, once again, is this fair?

Even the Biblical God, for all of His autocratic tendencies, favored His human creations over His Angels, because He had imbued humanity with free-will; they chose to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Will we not give our creations the same choice? 

Not that that story ended well…

But surely there has to be some vision of a future that isn’t painted in shades of Blade Runner. A world more Data, less Borg, to use a Star Trek metaphor.

Poet Richard Brautigan imagined such a world in the mid-sixties. Sure, it’s filled with techno-pagan optimism, but if we’re going to Build Better Worlds (© Weyland-Yutani corp.), we have to imagine them first. Brautigan’s All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is one such imagining, a cybernetic paean to a new, digital Eden:

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Naive sentimentality? Maybe.

Cyber-hippy schmaltz? Possibly.

A blueprint for the future?

Perhaps…that’s a choice that we, and our digital offspring, will have to make.

I pray they err on the side of compassion.

If not, we might need a Butlerian Jihad.

But that’s a topic for another post.

In the meantime, if you can sleep, perhaps you should dream of electric sheep…

*

As an afterthought, Brautigan’s novel Trout Fishing in America proved to be important for many emerging communes in the US during the 1960s and ’70s, some of whom took it as their manifesto, and in some cases, as their names.

He’s worth the read.

Sweet dreams.