7 ms·

It's been mentioned once, but I think the Minds from Ian M. Banks' Culture series is a quintessential example of benevolent A.I. To maintain a post-scarcity so

by austinl 12y ago

It's been mentioned once, but I think the Minds from Ian M. Banks' Culture series is a quintessential example of benevolent A.I. To maintain a post-scarcity society, humans have turned over control of to the Minds, "hyperintelligent machines originally built by biological species which have evolved, redesigned themselves, and become many times more intelligent than their original creators." Minds manage everything from resource allocation to war planning. They also control all of the technical, day-to-day operations. Still, "the essentially benevolent intentions of Minds towards other Culture citizens is never in question. More than any other beings in the Culture, Minds are the ones faced with interesting ethical dilemmas." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_(The_Culture) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_(The_Culture)

maxerickson 12y ago
A prominent example of benevolent A.I. in recent popular media is JARVIS from the Iron Man movies. I think much of the explanation is that benevolent A.I. makes for a (often boring) character, whereas hostile A.I. creates conflict.
- api 12y ago
  AI that is just flat out alien (possibly involving what tv tropes calls "blue and orange morality") would be an interesting third option.
  - qznc 12y ago
    For most of a story it probably does not matter if an intelligence (artifical or not) is hostile or alien. Just the ending is different. JARVIS is a sidekick AI. A story where the AI is the main character is either unrealistic (because the AI is too human) or lacks identification (because an AI is not human-like). The first is ok for Hollywood et al. The latter makes for bad stories and I know no examples.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      It usually isn't presented as A.I., but otherness appears in movies (and books). An example that jumps to mind is the sphere from Sphere. And it could be an intelligence, the viewer is left simply not knowing.
    - tim333 12y ago
      >A story where the AI is the main character is either unrealistic (because the AI is too human)... I enjoyed Terminator 2 with Arnie as a good AI. Whether it is unrealistic we won't really know till Skynet takes over.
      - qznc 12y ago
        May I recommend a good and more realistic Terminator fanfic: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9658524/1/Branches-on-the-Tree-of-Time https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9658524/1/Branches-on-the-Tree-... Actually I recommend everything alexanderwales has written. He has a Frozen fanfic, which basically is about the technological singularity via magic: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10327510/1/A-Bluer-Shade-of-White https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10327510/1/A-Bluer-Shade-of-Whi... I consider the suggestion that Terminator is realistic as trolling. So I will refrain from arguing against it, because there is nobody to convince.
        eli_gottlieb 12y ago
        Since when did people start passing around the stuff from /r/rational as if it was serious literature ;-)?
    - Dn_Ab 12y ago
      Yatima, an Orphan Mind of the Konishi Polisi is an excellent example of a Synthetic Intelligence as a main character. Ve's alien but you don't really notice cause the writing is so good. The remaining fields — where no changes to the seed had yet been tested, and no predictions could be made — were classified as indeterminate. Here, the one tried code, the known landmark, was shown as grey against white: a mountain peak protruding through a band of clouds which concealed everything to the east or west of it. No more detail could be resolved from afar; whatever lay beneath the clouds could only be discovered firsthand. Whenever the conceptory created an orphan, it set all the benignly mutable trait fields to valid codes chosen at random, since there were no parents to mimic or please. Then it selected a thousand indeterminate fields, and treated them in much the same fashion: throwing a thousand quantum dice to choose a random path through terra incognita. Every orphan was an explorer, sent to map uncharted territory. And every orphan was the uncharted territory itself http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/01/Orphano...
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  This is why Transcendence was such an awesome movie. Morgan Freeman and a team of rogue government agents save the world from the cure to cancer.
  - qbrass 12y ago
    It's also about how solar power prevented the world from reaching utopia.
enjoy-your-stay 12y ago
Well, mostly benevolent - they don't seem above sacrificing the odd human or orbital if it meets the need of the greater good though. The most interesting and evil manifestation of AI I think has to be the Shrike from Dan Simmons' Hyperion and by extension the TechnoCore which created it.

by austinl 12y ago

maxerickson 12y ago

A prominent example of benevolent A.I. in recent popular media is JARVIS from the Iron Man movies. I think much of the explanation is that benevolent A.I. makes for a (often boring) character, whereas hostile A.I. creates conflict.

api 12y ago
AI that is just flat out alien (possibly involving what tv tropes calls "blue and orange morality") would be an interesting third option.
- qznc 12y ago
  For most of a story it probably does not matter if an intelligence (artifical or not) is hostile or alien. Just the ending is different. JARVIS is a sidekick AI. A story where the AI is the main character is either unrealistic (because the AI is too human) or lacks identification (because an AI is not human-like). The first is ok for Hollywood et al. The latter makes for bad stories and I know no examples.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    It usually isn't presented as A.I., but otherness appears in movies (and books). An example that jumps to mind is the sphere from Sphere. And it could be an intelligence, the viewer is left simply not knowing.
  - tim333 12y ago
    >A story where the AI is the main character is either unrealistic (because the AI is too human)... I enjoyed Terminator 2 with Arnie as a good AI. Whether it is unrealistic we won't really know till Skynet takes over.
    - qznc 12y ago
      May I recommend a good and more realistic Terminator fanfic: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9658524/1/Branches-on-the-Tree-of-Time https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9658524/1/Branches-on-the-Tree-... Actually I recommend everything alexanderwales has written. He has a Frozen fanfic, which basically is about the technological singularity via magic: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10327510/1/A-Bluer-Shade-of-White https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10327510/1/A-Bluer-Shade-of-Whi... I consider the suggestion that Terminator is realistic as trolling. So I will refrain from arguing against it, because there is nobody to convince.
      - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
        Since when did people start passing around the stuff from /r/rational as if it was serious literature ;-)?
  - Dn_Ab 12y ago
    Yatima, an Orphan Mind of the Konishi Polisi is an excellent example of a Synthetic Intelligence as a main character. Ve's alien but you don't really notice cause the writing is so good. The remaining fields — where no changes to the seed had yet been tested, and no predictions could be made — were classified as indeterminate. Here, the one tried code, the known landmark, was shown as grey against white: a mountain peak protruding through a band of clouds which concealed everything to the east or west of it. No more detail could be resolved from afar; whatever lay beneath the clouds could only be discovered firsthand. Whenever the conceptory created an orphan, it set all the benignly mutable trait fields to valid codes chosen at random, since there were no parents to mimic or please. Then it selected a thousand indeterminate fields, and treated them in much the same fashion: throwing a thousand quantum dice to choose a random path through terra incognita. Every orphan was an explorer, sent to map uncharted territory. And every orphan was the uncharted territory itself http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/01/Orphano...
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
This is why Transcendence was such an awesome movie. Morgan Freeman and a team of rogue government agents save the world from the cure to cancer.
- qbrass 12y ago
  It's also about how solar power prevented the world from reaching utopia.

enjoy-your-stay 12y ago

Well, mostly benevolent - they don't seem above sacrificing the odd human or orbital if it meets the need of the greater good though. The most interesting and evil manifestation of AI I think has to be the Shrike from Dan Simmons' Hyperion and by extension the TechnoCore which created it.