So, the usual bet is that the GAI, both F and UF will be created at around that time at the latest. I'd like to set a novel, a thriller, right at that critical moment where everything could be lost or won, and humanity is in the balance. But human societies and the way they interact with each other will have changed a lot by then. So, well, I haven't read throughly enough here to understand how far we are anticipating what will happen. Not just the friendliness of AI development, but our own impact in the world, and how it will react when it finds out about us and our goals, and takes them seriously.
So I was wondering if you'd help me out here with some brainstorming. I'm looking for some seminal ideas for how the world will look like by then. We don't need to be 100% precise, although keeping the pieces of the setting vague by avoiding Burdensome Details is a way of avoiding glaring mistakes, and gives a Lord Of The Rings, Ruins In The Distance feel of false depth. Don't hesitate to suggest seemingly weird but actually reasonable ideas: the future I want to build is a Weirdtopia. The point is to frighten, wonder, and suck the reader in.
Let's see, for a start: cryogenics and cybernetics are a solved problem, and people's heads are being resurrected and put on mechanical bodies by default (they could ask for recreated biological bodies, but usually after the first tantrums... they don't ^_^). The audience can be given someone to identify with through a Temporal Fish Out Of Water, one of the resurrected Human Popsicles. The funny part is that, even though that person happens to be a transhumanist AND a singularitarian, they hadn't surpassed the Shock Level (I think that's what Yudkowsky called it when you were enthused with an idea because you don't think of it as normal yet?), and they are only marginally less freaked out by the world they find themselves into than the normal sci-fi fan readers (or even the mainstream ones, if this ends up so good as to have any).
Sounds fun. I made a little video last month about what Hanson calls "Ems" that's supposed to grow into a bigger discussion on the political and social consequences. I call 'em "Uploads" though.
That's more immediate-future rather than fifty years hence though. The script for later episodes talks more about their having failed to make any kind of AI work properly other than by scanning and uploading though, how learning facts is not the same as understanding with digs at the Cyc project.
If you're setting something further future I'd think a lot about exactly how this whole internet thing is going to be affecting social change over the next fifty years. Everyone's presumably connected wirelessly all the time, google and the wikipedia closer to everyone's brain than merely "at their fingertips". How does conversation change when everyone know everything there is to know about everything?
I really enjoyed this, very watchable. Subscribed!
0Raw_Power
Watched the video. Loved it. Except for the bit at the end, the positions were made to look too emotional rather than reasoned. Instead of saying an outraged "going to church makes him moral?" he could have said something along the lines of "you know who else went to church every day? Archbishop Richeleu and Girgori Rasputin. You know what they had in common, besides being high-ranking priests? They shanked a number of women that's in the order of the hundreds" or maybe some shorter but equally strong counterexample in the "him going to church doesn't prove anything" line, including that exact phrasing, especially if they've talked about the topic before.
There's also a serious audio problem, I really had to strain my ears to listen.
Otherwise, as I said, I loved it, especially the implications of "living in the Metaverse".
So, the usual bet is that the GAI, both F and UF will be created at around that time at the latest. I'd like to set a novel, a thriller, right at that critical moment where everything could be lost or won, and humanity is in the balance. But human societies and the way they interact with each other will have changed a lot by then. So, well, I haven't read throughly enough here to understand how far we are anticipating what will happen. Not just the friendliness of AI development, but our own impact in the world, and how it will react when it finds out about us and our goals, and takes them seriously.
So I was wondering if you'd help me out here with some brainstorming. I'm looking for some seminal ideas for how the world will look like by then. We don't need to be 100% precise, although keeping the pieces of the setting vague by avoiding Burdensome Details is a way of avoiding glaring mistakes, and gives a Lord Of The Rings, Ruins In The Distance feel of false depth. Don't hesitate to suggest seemingly weird but actually reasonable ideas: the future I want to build is a Weirdtopia. The point is to frighten, wonder, and suck the reader in.
Let's see, for a start: cryogenics and cybernetics are a solved problem, and people's heads are being resurrected and put on mechanical bodies by default (they could ask for recreated biological bodies, but usually after the first tantrums... they don't ^_^). The audience can be given someone to identify with through a Temporal Fish Out Of Water, one of the resurrected Human Popsicles. The funny part is that, even though that person happens to be a transhumanist AND a singularitarian, they hadn't surpassed the Shock Level (I think that's what Yudkowsky called it when you were enthused with an idea because you don't think of it as normal yet?), and they are only marginally less freaked out by the world they find themselves into than the normal sci-fi fan readers (or even the mainstream ones, if this ends up so good as to have any).