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The Butlerian Jihad
- JehanneButler 4y agoThou shalt not make a machine in the image of man's mind.
- goatlover 4y agoWondering what Leto II would have said of the uses of ChatGPT?
- david_shi 4y agoI asked GPT-4: "Leto II Atreides, a character from Frank Herbert's Dune series, is a highly intelligent and prescient ruler who exists thousands of years after the Butlerian Jihad, an event where humanity revolted against thinking machines and artificial intelligence. Considering the context of the Butlerian Jihad, Leto II would likely have a complex view of ChatGPT. As a highly advanced AI language model, ChatGPT might be seen as a potential threat to humanity's independence and autonomy, given the lessons learned during the Butlerian Jihad. Leto II might say something like: "Though the ChatGPT technology may offer convenience and assistance, one must remain vigilant in maintaining the boundaries between human thought and machine. The Butlerian Jihad taught us the dangers of relying too heavily on artificial intelligence, as it may erode the very essence of humanity. We must be cautious in integrating such technologies, ensuring that they serve as tools to enhance our lives without supplanting our innate abilities, creativity, and decision-making." In essence, Leto II would likely emphasize the importance of using AI like ChatGPT responsibly and with caution, taking care to preserve the balance between machine assistance and human independence, to prevent any potential resurgence of the issues faced during the Butlerian Jihad."
- dougmwne 4y agoKill it with fire.
- echelon 4y agoI can't wait to take LLMs this powerful off of the OpenAI/Microsoft guard rails. We're going to be able to write incredible fiction.
- dougmwne 4y agoIt is pretty close now. I got access through Poe. The censorship is light as long as you avoid sex and violence. It can do some sex though, for example I was able to generate a collection of pillow talk for a specific cultural context.
- thundergolfer 4y agoTypically incredible coherence, but also typical in it's fence-sitting uselessness that spends a lot of words but doesn't dare make a point. I've only read up to book 4, but Leto II uses AI (well, advanced Ixian) technology but hides it. At least in book 4, he would have said that ChatGPT is not to be used at all by his people or his council, and wouldn't have used it himself, as he didn't need it. Again, impressive tech, but doesn't give you an interesting or useful answer.
- personjerry 4y agoChatGPT isn't a person, it's not supposed to make a point. The response actually gives you both sides of the coin. If you want, you could ask it to speak more about one side or the other. Then you have to make the decision which argument is stronger. ChatGPT is an advanced bot, not a basic human. It doesn't think like we do in the form of stories and conclusions. You're not going to get it to form an argument unless you tell it to. Would you be mad at an encyclopedia for not choosing a side?
- MikusR 4y agoI imagine that the Ixian techonlogy was like fixed function blocks in current cpus. Can do only a single thing. Like decode h264 or navigate space. If I recall correctly then Leto II had an actual programmable computer (monochrome display, keyboard) in his vault that he used to write his journal.
- goatlover 4y agoCan you ask it whether the Brian Herbert's portrayal of Marty and Daniel is consistent with what Frank wrote?
- richardjam73 4y agoSays a lot without really saying anything at all. It reminds me of when I was struggling to write essays in school just with better grammar.
- hummus_bae 4y ago[dead]
- csdvrx 4y agoI don't understand why people like to fantasize the worst case scenarios. Sentient things appreciate eachother. If you have a pet, you are most certainly benevolent to it: you house it for free, you feed it, and you entertain it. Even if we assume AI becomes a few orders of magnitude more intelligent that humans, why would AI treat humans differently from the way we treat pets? I don't see the drawback in being housed, fed, and entertained by an omniscient AI (who may also enjoy post cute pictures of their humans on the future AI social network)
- teucris 4y agoCats and dogs apparently evolved over thousands of years to be endearing to humans so we’d take care of them. How many cat/dog ancestors do you think were eaten by humans during that process?
- midoridensha 4y agoNo, they didn't. Dogs were intentionally bred by humans, with the "toy" breeds commonly seen now being very recent inventions. Cats, on the other hand, are barely any different from their wild ancestors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wildcat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wildcat
- teucris 4y agoThat makes sense. But I think the broader point I was trying to make stands.
- lanternfish 4y agoGiven that not all animals keep pets, I think it's clear that the complex evolutionary pressures that result in 'cuteness' or pet ownership aren't necessary for sentience.
- ajross 4y ago> I don't understand why people like to fantasize the worst case scenarios. The biggest TV show this year is literally yet another zombie apocalypse[1]. This is the easiest part to understand. What got frustrating was when all the effective altruists got all distracted about the AI Overlord Problem and stopped doing actual charity. But it was the charity thing that annoyed us; no one wanted to deny them their sci-fi proclivities. [1] Albeit a really great one that's really about the meaning of happiness and belonging that you should absolutely watch.
- wintorez 4y agoSo it has come to this....
- devindotcom 4y agoAnd Butler himself: https://www.bartleby.com/library/prose/1066.html https://www.bartleby.com/library/prose/1066.html An interesting read if you haven't already read Erewhon.
- JasonFruit 4y agoAs the rabbis say, "May this day come quickly and in our time!" Except maybe not the whole destroying the Earth with atomics part.
- tetrisgm 4y agoIt was a necessary point in the world building of Dune. Frank Herbert needed his world to not have AI or human like robots. He explored alternatives: human computers via Mentats, and Terminator like infiltrators via facedancers. Dune takes a fantasy like approach to technology. There are no lasers, because they would cause a nuclear reaction. There are no robots, because of their past uprising. This was a neat way to tie loose ends and sustain the universe. Brilliant.
- alexjplant 4y ago> Dune takes a fantasy like approach to technology. This is why I love Dune and how I describe it to people that aren't familiar with it; the world-building splits the difference perfectly.
- keyle 4y agoYeah there is something in the world building of Frank Herbert that never leaves you when you've read the entire series. I also like that there are implied abuse of the Bulterian bible later in the series... The stuff going on on Ix and the Tleilaxus' interpretation of the code.
- paranoidrobot 4y ago> There are no lasers, It's been a long while since I read the books, but I watched the 2021 movie* more recently. If not lasers, what were the beams emitted by the space ships, and the portable beam weapon the Sardaukar soldiers when attacking the outpost? Or is that something the movie added?
- Slow_Hand 4y agoLasers do exist in the story, but they're not widely used in warfare because when a laser makes contact with a holtzmann shield (the personal shields that all of the characters employ) it causes a nuclear reaction that annihilates both parties and everyone in a large radius. This makes them extremely risky to use. There's a great moment in the book where a character sets a trap by engaging a shield and fleeing the area before an errant enemy laser eventually connects with it and creates a massive explosion to cripple the invading forces. With that in mind the careless use of lasers in the film on two occasions is puzzling considering that it would be an extremely risky and dangerous tactic in the book's universe.
- hax0ron3 4y agoThe Butlerian Jihad is an unlikely fantasy. Technological advance follows a Darwinian logic: if one group of beings decides to stop developing an advantageous technology, then almost always eventually a different group of beings will develop that technology anyway and will then probably outcompete the group that decided to not develop the technology. This is why stopping AI development would be extremely hard. You might as well try to get countries to give up their nuclear weapons. To pull off something like the Butlerian Jihad, you would need the group of beings that oppose thinking machines to somehow defeat the group of beings that are perfectly fine with using thinking machines as assistants in the war against the other group.
- aaron_m04 4y agoThis assumes that AI makes a group stronger rather than weaker.
- 1attice 4y agoA safe assumption, just a LLaMA torrent away from confirmation. I bet you that an un-guardrailed LLM just slays at, well, slaying. Put it in a Boston Robotics.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- omniglottal 4y agoThe ease and magnitude of this presumably human-generated extent of "confirmation" leaves one with a profound sense of loss on behalf of human cognition and its foregone limitations.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y agoThis is precisely what happens though. Mentats, Guild Navigators, the Bene *s. Instead of machines they evolved people.
- makeworld 4y ago
- walrus01 4y agoChatgpt could probably write a better book than Herbert's son. Seriously, all the dune prequels are just so bad. If you read the first 2, 3, 4 dune books and enjoyed the (5 and 6 get really weird), and pick up one of the books published after Herbert's death, you will be very disappointed.
- keyle 4y agoI have to agree. When I was younger I read the Dune series cover to cover, and it was almost transcending for my young self. I tried the prequels, book 1, never finished. I guess magic does not transcend the human flesh.
- sl0tr4cer 4y agointeresting to contrast Christopher Tolkien and Brian Herbert in their treatment of their fathers' literary inheritance
- red-iron-pine 4y agoChris Tolkien didn't really write anything new from whole cloth, he mostly deleted or married his father's notes and short writings; more editing than creating. Brian Herbert wrote multiple books from scratch. His father left notes too, but nothing that would give him the ability to write multiple novels.
- david38 4y agoNah, Brian seemingly put his name on it and outsourced the writing to Kevin Anderson. From the quality of story, it looks like he outsourced it to the highest bidder. According to his bio notes, Brian is an “acclaimed author” in his own right. Why then outsource to the likes of Kevin Anderson? He absolutely ruined the books and turned them into “churn them out” fiction.
- dbtc 4y agoI've long held the first Dune novel high on my list of good books, but only recently I've gone through the following 6 (as audiobooks), and I highly recommend them. The scale of ideas and events absolutely dwarfs the first novel.
- hackyhacky 4y agoI loved the first book, but I found the sequels to offer diminishing returns. The fourth one, God Emperor of Dune, was such a joyless slog that I gave up.
- lapcat 4y agoI thought the 4th was the best book of the series.
- moshun 4y agoAbsolutely agree, it’s the book that makes so much of the story make sense and elevates the series beyond most other sci-fi / fantasy. Even now, 30 years after I first read it, I’m blown away by how much I refer back to the principles of leadership and human behavior discussed. Really well written work.
- woleium 4y agoHave you read anything about Herbert's education and work? It may help you understand why he is so good.
- lapcat 4y ago"The Maker of Dune" adds a lot of personal insight to his work. https://www.amazon.com/Maker-Dune-Insights-Science-Fiction/dp/0425097854 https://www.amazon.com/Maker-Dune-Insights-Science-Fiction/d... I used to have a copy but sold it at some point. Apparently it's hard to find now, given the very high price. Update: The entire book is in the Internet Archive! https://archive.org/details/the-maker-of-dune-insights-of-a-master-of-science-fiction-by-frank-herbert-tim-o-reilly/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/the-maker-of-dune-insights-of-a-...
- esrh 4y agoIs it really that hard to imagine a rebel group of newly unemployed desperate people bombing an openai data center?
- omniglottal 4y agoRegretably, it's becoming increasingly imaginable that human intelligence goes so far as to see this as a solution to anything.
- litiholofan 4y ago[flagged]
- Slow_Hand 4y agoThe story is set approx 20,000 years in humanity's future and many of the spiritual traditions of our age have combined into new permutations by the time of the book's story. Such examples are the ZenSunni or the Orange Catholics. I take the use of the term jihad to be a choice by Frank to add texture and imply how many human cultures have cross-pollinated. The particulars of these religions are rarely addressed in any depth. Although, strangely, a small group of Jews pop up in the sixth book. They seem mostly un-changed compared to our modern-day Jews. Also, the indigenous people of Arrakis (the desert planet and focal point of the series) are loosely based on Bedouin culture, and so Frank co-opts arabic terminology and concepts as a jumping-off point for his character's culture. These same people are also descendants of the ZenSunni wanderers, who migrated to Arrakis long ago, and thus there is additional continuity there.
- euroderf 4y agoIIRC the part about how mankind got to Arrakis (and elsewhere) before Guild FTL is kinda hand-wavey.
- trobertson 4y agoThe original text has a lot more Islam than the movies do. The most recent film deliberately toned down the Islam.
- rvieira 4y agoI disagree, in the sense that it was heavily toned down in the 1984 film, but less in the 2021 one. The Bedouin analogy is much more underlined in the recent film. Everything from clothing, skin tone to language is more Bedouin-like than in the David Lynch movie.