[HN Gopher] A Deal with the Devil
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A Deal with the Devil
Author : Caiero
Score : 39 points
Date : 2024-07-10 05:06 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lithub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lithub.com)
| squircle wrote:
| Is AI a proverbial deal with the devil?
| api wrote:
| No, but it's adjacent to one in the form of where the data
| comes from.
|
| The modern practice of trading all our data and privacy for
| free services and convenience is definitely one.
|
| The devil just hasn't come to collect yet. When we get a more
| authoritarian government that's when the bill will come due.
| jhbadger wrote:
| William Gibson's _Neuromancer_ makes that analogy, at least.
| From the scene where Case is apprehended by the "Turing
| Police" who regulate the human-level AIs of the setting:
|
| >`You are worse than a fool,' Michelle said, getting to her
| feet, the pistol in her hand. `You have no care for your
| species. For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with
| demons. Only now are such things possible. And what would you
| be paid with? What would your price be, for aiding this thing
| to free itself and grow?'
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Is a deal with any god, even a benevolent one (like a Culture
| Mind), a deal with the devil?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| On HN I've seen the reading that Culture humans are pretty
| much housecats to the Culture Minds. Is that a mainstream
| reading, or fringe?
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Seen it a couple of times on /r/theculture, once or twice
| on spacebattles as well. The lack of purpose in the
| Culture, of meaning of life, spawns in some readers all
| kind of coping mechanisms.
|
| Most sane take was that the relationships between the Minds
| and humans is like the relationship between grown-up
| children and their elderly parents.
| bartvk wrote:
| Thanks so much for pointing out that subreddit. I've read
| and re-read Banks' novels and now I can read _about_ them
| every now and then.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >On HN I've seen the reading that Culture humans are pretty
| much housecats to the Culture Minds.
|
| HN is the only place I've seen that take. It may be present
| in the books of the series I haven't read yet, but I feel
| like it was mostly one person's interpretation that gets
| repeated here.
| tivert wrote:
| > On HN I've seen the reading that Culture humans are
| pretty much housecats to the Culture Minds. Is that a
| mainstream reading, or fringe?
|
| I think it's a pretty mainstream reading. I've seen it a
| lot, and, IMHO, it'd be pretty hard to interpret those
| books any other way. IIRC, there's even one other species
| in that has that view, and chose to use "accelerated
| copies" of themselves to command their ships instead of AI,
| to avoid that fate.
| unraveller wrote:
| Given that gov ai is a foregone conclusion that no civilian had
| free will over the existence of, deciding whether to admire any
| civ ai attempts is just a measure of how liberating or
| disruptive and regretful you think civ ai could be.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Nope. It's the classic "disruption" aka. mowing down the Garden
| of Eden, turning it into a golf course, and using the last
| supply of clean water as a latrine.
|
| (the Garden of Eden being the collective scientific and
| creative output of the whole of humanity so far)
| thriftwy wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37055388
|
| My own take on AI as a short SF story co-written by AI.
| blueyes wrote:
| A Pyrrhic tradeoff.
| more_corn wrote:
| The whole concept of the devil is problematic. It prevents
| reconciliation of self and denies us the chance to do better. It
| cheapens choice and absolves wrongdoers of responsibility for
| choosing correct action. Blaming the devil for incorrect action
| is merely following sin with sin and hiding it all behind a lie.
| Stand up, take responsibility for your actions and do better. You
| are not a child to hide behind your mother's skirts and blame an
| invisible made up evil for your actions. You are a self,
| responsible for your choices and accountable for your actions.
| There is no devil whispering in your ear, that voice is you. But
| the angel on your other shoulder is also you and you alone get to
| choose.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Some adaptions of Faust deal with this theme exactly (ex.
| Kamelot's _Epica_ and _The Black Halo_ , or the film _The Devil
| 's Advocate_). In these adaptions, Mephistopheles makes a deal
| with Faust for earthly bliss or power in exchange for Faust's
| soul upon death. Faust willingly accepts, then chooses to
| further pursue this power or bliss at some personal expense, a
| decision he later regrets, but blames Mephistopheles for.
| Mephistopheles then generously offers a genuine way to
| alleviate his loss, which Faust distrusts and declines, and he
| continues to suffer while blaming Mephistopheles for the
| consequences of his own free choices. Eventually, after much
| internal conflict, Faust accepts he alone is to blame for his
| loss and suffering, and at that moment he is given a second
| chance to choose differently.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| There is no proverbial Devil. But there are people who are
| willing to "do Devils work".
|
| So we should not "blame the Devil". We should blame the people
| who do the Devil's work or let it continue.
|
| For instance slavery. Was it Devil that enslaved all the
| kidnapped people? No, it was Devil's co-conspirators, the
| slave-owners.
|
| "Devil" is a social concept and construct, and a very important
| one. It's not much different from asking "What would Jesus Do?"
| mbivert wrote:
| > It prevents reconciliation of self and denies us the chance
| to do better.
|
| It's also a way to forgive yourself, and others, more easily.
| Don't get me wrong, I think it's fantastic to take
| responsibility, and I believe society would be so much better
| for it. But in some circumstances, some people are simply bound
| to fail: there are limits to how perfect one can be.
|
| I suppose we can set aside the special case where genuinely
| malign & vicious devils would really exist, and be in position
| of truly wrecking havoc!
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > There is no devil whispering in your ear, that voice is you.
|
| In general, I agree with you. But there is some nuance here.
| Some of us really do have devils whispering in our ears. We do
| not always have the agency to make correct decisions.
|
| Responsibility takes different forms. Somebody took my body and
| I'm left holding the consequences. No one is going to clean up
| this mess and I have to deal with it. Personally, I was shocked
| how many of friends understood what happened and offered their
| support. Those that understood made no attempt to "hold me
| responsible" for my actions.
| wudangmonk wrote:
| The problem is omniscience. With that, not only do you need a
| villain to take the blame, you also need a special ability
| called free-will that gets around the omniscience issue.
| Otherwise the only conclusion is that your god is both good and
| evil and chooses who gets to experience which.
| unraveller wrote:
| The concept also gives a great outline of a shifty target to be
| wary of that must be out manoeuvred regularly. Full control is
| great except when you are fooled into thinking you are in full
| control. Reward vectors out of our control rewire us way too
| easily if we don't stay wary of their power.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| I was intrigued not so much by the TFA but about the painting
| used to illustrate it. That figure behind the two chess players
| is not a devil as typically depicted, it is instead an angel, a
| symbol of heaven and almost the exact opposite of an evil devil.
| Instead, the devil, Mephistopheles, is the player on the left.
|
| It seems the artist, Moritz Retzsch, painted several versions of
| this image [1]. The painting(s) have gone by several names, such
| as "The Chess Players", "The Game of Life", or "Checkmate". More
| interesting is the story that a grandmaster examined the painting
| and discovered that the player on the right, looking defeated and
| forlorn, can still win the game! I have not verified this, but
| the story goes that the grandmaster demanded the gallery change
| the name of the painting from "Checkmate" to something else [2].
|
| [1]. https://www.one-more-move-chess-art.com/MoritzRetzsch.html
|
| [2]. https://haventoday.org/blog/closer-look-checkmate/
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