[HN Gopher] Arthur C. Clarke Predicted the Rise of AI (1978)
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       Arthur C. Clarke Predicted the Rise of AI (1978)
        
       Author : ohjeez
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2025-06-04 21:39 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
        
       | timmg wrote:
       | Tangentially related: I recently read The Moon is a Harsh
       | Mistress (by Heinlein). It was a fantastic read (IMHO). And it
       | has extra relevance right now with the AI/LLM progress we are
       | seeing.
        
       | ednite wrote:
       | Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Clarke. In fact, I'm kind of
       | obsessed with a lot of sci-fi writers.
       | 
       | I just wanted to point out that Star Trek did the rogue AI thing
       | a year earlier, the 1967 episode with Nomad was basically "kill
       | all unworthy lifeforms." Probably rooted in post-war anxieties,
       | maybe even echoes of the Holocaust. But nevertheless, an AI bent
       | on a mission, unable to question its original directive.
       | 
       | Then came HAL 9000 in 1968 , cold, calculating, and quietly
       | terrifying. Still creeps me out!
       | 
       | But credit where it's due , Asimov laid the groundwork for
       | ethical AI way back in the 1940s with his Three Laws. That's hard
       | to beat.
       | 
       | Different styles, different fears, but all compelling visions of
       | futures we're creeping toward or not. I'm rooting for the latter.
        
       | dhosek wrote:
       | There was a short story I read back in the early 80s (although it
       | was much older), which predicted LLMs--albeit rather oddly. The
       | system had a chimpanzee connected to a computer (the chimp being
       | the magic sauce to make the AI work). You could give it the
       | beginning of a text and it would create the ideal ending. An
       | author was using it to argue with his editor about a scene break
       | and they used the beginning of Hamlet's soliloquy ("to be or not
       | to be..." to demonstrate the system before giving it the author's
       | story to see what it did. I've thought about this story a lot
       | lately, and would love to turn it up again.
        
       | tokamak wrote:
       | Stenislaw Lem, Dialogues, 1957
        
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