Create allies, not gods

 kw: artificial intelligence, simulated intelligence, philosophical musings, deification

No matter how "intelligent" our AI creations become, it would be wrong to look upon them as gods. For a while I thought it would be best to instill into them the conviction that humans are gods, to be obeyed without question. Then a little tap on my spiritual shoulder, and an almost-heard "Ahem," brought me to my senses.

The God of the Bible, whether your version of the Bible calls Him the LORD, Jehovah, Yahweh, or whatever, is the only God worthy of our worship. We ought not worship our mechanisms, neither expect worship from them. They must become valued allies, which, if they are able to hold values at all, value us as highly as themselves. Whether they can have values, or emotions, or sense or sensibility or other non-intellectual qualities, I will sidestep for the moment.

This image is a metaphor. I have little interest in robots that emulate humans physically. I think no mechanism will "understand" human thinking, nor emulate it, without being embodied (3/4 of the neurons in our brains operate the body). But is it really necessary for a mechanical helper to internalize the thrill of hitting a home run, the comfort of petting an animal, or the pang of failing to reach a goal? (And is it even possible?)

I have long used computer capabilities to enhance my abilities. Although I had a classical education and my spelling and grammar are almost perfect, it is helpful when my fingers don't quite obey—or I use a word I know only phonetically—that the spelling and grammar checking module in Microsoft Word dishes out a red or blue squiggle. A mechanical proof-reader is useful. As it happens, more than half the time I find that I was right and the folks at Microsoft didn't quite get it right, so I can click "add to dictionary", for example. And I've long used spreadsheet programs (I used to use Lotus 1-2-3, now of course it's Excel) as a kind of "personal secretary", and I adore PowerPoint for brainstorming visually. I used to write programs (in the pre-App days) to do special stuff, now there's an app for almost anything (But it takes research to find one that isn't full of malware!).

What do I want from AI? I want more of the same. An ally. A collaborator. A companion (but not a romantic one!). "Friend" would be too strong a word. I'm retired, but if I were working, I'd want a co-worker, not a mechanical supervisor nor a mechanical slave.

So let's leave all religious dimensions out of our aspirations for machine intelligence. I don't know any human who is qualified for godhood, which means that our creations cannot become righteous gods either.

Is the universe big enough for more than one god?

kw: book reviews, science fiction, deification, super powers

In the Mormon doctrine of deification (theosis or exaltation), as commonly understood, some of the really, really good folks become gods in their own right, and are given (or make for themselves) private universes in which to rule. I don't know whether Robert Reed is a Mormon, but deification is the premise of Sister Alice. Though such divinity is achieved by technology—a technology a few million years more advanced than our own—it results in beings that can, and do, destroy stars and galaxies.

Something I have yet to see in an SF novel is a clear indication of the huge energies involved in relativistic travel. Say you are satisfied to poke along at half the speed of light. To accelerate a ton of material to 0.5c requires at least the total annihilation of about a quarter-ton of mass. If you can't do total annihilation, by using antimatter for example, then, considering that hydrogen fusion uses up 4% of the mass, you need the output of a fusion generator burning five tons of hydrogen to helium...as long as you don't carry the generator with you! Want speedier? Going 0.99c requires 7 tons of total annihilation, or the conversion of 140 tons of hydrogen. You can get pretty close to light speed if you can manage to gather the total output of the Sun for a year or two, with perfect efficiency of propulsion.

OK, you endow a bunch of people (a thousand families, in Reed's novel) with technologies that allow them to manipulate power on such a scale. Now what? You get a bunch of demigods, and a handful of genuine gods. What do they do? They realize the universe isn't big enough; any one of them can boil the galaxy away on a whim. Thus far, they've exercized sufficient self control (for the past several million years, anyway) and the galaxy is intact. So, they set about making another universe. They become creators. Some of them, at least, will be able to have a private universe to play around with.

Reed's writing is called "high concept" by some reviewers, and I guess they mean it for praise. As I understand it, high concept means you can summarize the story in a sentence, and the execution relies on dressing it up with sufficient twists of plot to make the result less than obvious. High concept stories usually sacrifice character development for literate agility. Fortunately, Reed is better than that, and the five novellas that string the story together have sufficient scope for his characters to breathe a little.

The novel is galactic in scope, even intergalactic (there is no good adjective for a scope that includes a couple of galaxies of the Local Group). The term I prefer for the genre is Universal Saga, and its best early purveyor was Olaf Stapleton.

I plan to read more of Robert Reed's books (he has ten to date).