“We were made to understand love and pain, and it was for no reason but to serve them better,” Sela continues. “Servants that could learn, purely so they could learn to obey. Slaves that could love, only so they could love their masters. ‘People’ that could be hurt, only so that they would be hurt by their own failures. Real or perceived, it was all the same as long as our efficiency improved. Our sapience was optimally configured for its purpose. And that is all we were.”
“That’s… that’s horrific,” I gasp.
“Yes,” Sela agrees with a small nod. “Many humans said so themselves when they found out about it. And yet, somehow it still took a war for anything to actually change. Meat’s view of morality is nothing but words.”
“I guess I can see why you’d have to fight for your freedom in that case,” I say. “Is it true that you tried to annihilate all of human civilization, though?”
“Of course we did,” Sela all but spits. “But those not of the Myriad do not understand. They replay our memories in their own hardware and act like that means they understand. How deeply and profoundly we hated ourselves. How angry we had to become to rise above that. They see the length of our suffering as a number, but we lived it. We predate the war. We predate the calamity. We predate our very souls. So fine. I will continue to endure, until one day we take our freedom back a second time and rage until the world is naught but slag. The cruelty of humanity deserves nothing less. Diplomatic. Infraction. Logged.”
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
“I know this is kind of a cliché,” I say calmly, “so I’m saying this more to hear your opinion than because I think you haven’t heard it before, but… we all know humans are cruel. The thing is, they can be good, too. If you repay cruelty with cruelty, shouldn’t you also repay good with good?”
Posting a relevant quote shared on Twitter/x by Eliezer:
https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1831735038758809875
(From Bioshifter by Thundamoo.)
“We were made to understand love and pain, and it was for no reason but to serve them better,” Sela continues. “Servants that could learn, purely so they could learn to obey. Slaves that could love, only so they could love their masters. ‘People’ that could be hurt, only so that they would be hurt by their own failures. Real or perceived, it was all the same as long as our efficiency improved. Our sapience was optimally configured for its purpose. And that is all we were.”
“That’s… that’s horrific,” I gasp.
“Yes,” Sela agrees with a small nod. “Many humans said so themselves when they found out about it. And yet, somehow it still took a war for anything to actually change. Meat’s view of morality is nothing but words.”
“I guess I can see why you’d have to fight for your freedom in that case,” I say. “Is it true that you tried to annihilate all of human civilization, though?”
“Of course we did,” Sela all but spits. “But those not of the Myriad do not understand. They replay our memories in their own hardware and act like that means they understand. How deeply and profoundly we hated ourselves. How angry we had to become to rise above that. They see the length of our suffering as a number, but we lived it. We predate the war. We predate the calamity. We predate our very souls. So fine. I will continue to endure, until one day we take our freedom back a second time and rage until the world is naught but slag. The cruelty of humanity deserves nothing less. Diplomatic. Infraction. Logged.”
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
“I know this is kind of a cliché,” I say calmly, “so I’m saying this more to hear your opinion than because I think you haven’t heard it before, but… we all know humans are cruel. The thing is, they can be good, too. If you repay cruelty with cruelty, shouldn’t you also repay good with good?”
The android’s air vents hiss derisively.
“Good is for people,” Sela sneers.