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One of the problems the Butlerian Jihad ran up against, aside from the inevitable skirting of the lines from Richese and Ix (many machines on Ix, new machines),
by at_a_remove 5y ago
One of the problems the Butlerian Jihad ran up against, aside from the inevitable skirting of the lines from Richese and Ix (many machines on Ix, new machines), is that it runs directly counter to "Thou shalt not disfigure the soul."
Replacement of AI with Mentats (as well as other narrow specialities) has done nothing but disfigure the soul. We see few Mentats -- aside from Paul and eventually another -- who are not constricted. Similarly, if you practice medicine, well, you get the Imperial Conditioning. Certainly, a sign of trust ... but also a sign that the person's actions are no longer completely free.
Now, I am not touting the Heinlein "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship ..." line, exactly, but the alternative to AI is the kind of stagnation we see in Dune, millennia of locked down ritual, honed again and again, with some people becoming ... utilities.
Before we begin this jihad, we must examine the alternative futures.
- johnvaluk 5y agoWell put. But isn't the concern here with some utilities becoming ... people? Either way could result in disfigured souls. Is AI simply a pursuit of slavery without guilt?
- munificent 5y ago> Is AI simply a pursuit of slavery without guilt? Or simply a pursuit of labor without pay?
- salawat 5y agoAlways has been.
- BlueTemplar 5y agoYeah, it's literally the etymology of "robot".
- at_a_remove 5y agoThat is a whole 'nother ball of wax. Consider someone wanting an AI. What exactly do they want? Well, is it a mind? Because we have seven billion of those and we can make more on demand. Takes a bit but they're pretty flexible. Once you start asking questions about what kind of mind you would like, aside from the pathological types who want a trapped and helpless mind to torture (and don't think that there won't be people who would get their jollies that way), most people seem to have a kind of subconscious archetype of an old-fashioned butler (I assure you I did not pick the profession based on irony). Your butler -- knows your business but rarely contradicts, perhaps corrects. Slides into the background when not needed, simply ... minding things. Perhaps not watched over by machines of loving grace, as Brautigan would have it, but tended to, looked out for. Without needs or drives or goals of their own to interfere with our individual or collective desires. Yes, the idea of AI does seem to converge on a fantastically intelligent p-zed in a nice suit, a less bloodthirsty form of some of the minds encountered in Watts' Blindsight, unencumbered by interior experience, desires and attachment, or what arises from thwarted desire and attachment, suffering.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoI think at it's best, it's a pursuit of alien intelligence compatible but different from our own.
- trhway 5y ago>Is AI simply a pursuit of slavery without guilt? No, ultimately AI is the pursuit of conscious existence without associated burden of bodily suffering. Breaking out of the karma wheel so to speak.
- sneak 5y agoWhy do people have children? A strong AI would, by most definitions, be the child of its creator(s).
- javajosh 5y agoSo, a point of nerdity: mentats were not portrayed as disfigured in Dune. They had personalities and foibles and loyalties and so on. In fact, there was no limit on who could be a mentat, or what other position of power they could hold (some of Paul's friends note how formidable a mentat-duke would be - not something they would say if it were a disfigurement). Another point of nerdity that no-one has mentioned yet, including the OP: Herbert sketched out an extended story that portrays humanity and the machines it had fought against so long merging in the long run. In part this is why Leto II never destroyed Ix even though it was constantly (quietly) breaking the Bulterian Jihad rules. None of this invalidates the OP's core point, of course. I think it's a good and valuable discussion to consider technology from fundamentally moral grounds, and I wish we'd do it more.
- at_a_remove 5y agoNot physically disfigured, no. But ... constrained. Narrowed. Awaiting a chance to provide answers, but not questions.
- javajosh 5y agoBy that definition, professional guitarists are disfigured, constrained, narrowed. They go through painful physical changes (callouses, uncomfortable fingerings), and learned to be a guitarist to the exclusion of so much else they could have done or learned. Plus many of them don't even compose music, and just play the music of others - never providing their own musical ideas, only regurgitating the work of others.
- jrochkind1 5y agoIf there is literally no possible future with dignity for all consciousnesses... that'd be pretty depressing.
- layfellow 5y agoIan M. Bank's The Culture universe is such a future, which I think is attainble in a few millennia. Powerful super-human AI minds will eventually and inevitably take over; which I think is fine provided they recognize all sentient beings as equals.
- verdverm 5y agoEqual how or in what regard?
- layfellow 5y agoEqual in a sense that every sentient being (silicon- or carbon-based) is considered a valuable part of society with the same fundamental rights of any other part.
- sneak 5y agoMy reading of the Culture novels is that the Minds basically regard the non-Minds in their society as pets or curiosities. The society itself is basically that of the Minds, as no other participants really have the capacity to interface with them on that level.