OK, look, literally a five-year-old would say “but what about my friends who are girls”. That the author writes a ‘superintelligence’ who does not address this objection, and a main character who does not mention any, say, coworkers, board-game-playing rivals, or recreational hockey team members who are women, gives an overwhelming, and overwhelmingly unpleasant, impression that women are solely romance and sex objects. That’s not only gross, it’s a very common failure mode of “we’re too smart to be sexist” male tech geeks. And, indeed, downthread you can see other commenters talking about how great a utopia this sounds like.
That the author writes a ‘superintelligence’ who does not address this objection
That is, the point of the entire exercise, i.e., to show one out of a gazillion possible failure modes that can happen if you get FAI almost (but not quite) right—a theme that shows up time and time again in EY’s fiction. Acting like the superintelligence character is some kind of Author Avatar is really ignorant of… well, everything else he’s written. That’s why this a “Failed Utopia” and not a “Utopia.”
and a main character who does not mention any, say, coworkers, board-game-playing rivals, or recreational hockey team members who are women, gives an overwhelming, and overwhelmingly unpleasant, impression that women are solely romance and sex objects.
How long does the plot take—perhaps ten minutes? We see the main character in a moment of extreme shock, and then, extreme grief—an extreme grief that is vitally important to the moral of the story (explicitly: “I didn’t want this, even though the AI was programmed to be ‘friendly’”). Adding anyone else to the plot dilutes this point.
And, indeed, downthread you can see other commenters talking about how great a utopia this sounds like.
That is, the point of the entire exercise, i.e., to show one out of a gazillion possible failure modes that can happen if you get FAI almost (but not quite) right—a theme that shows up time and time again in EY’s fiction. Acting like the superintelligence character is some kind of Author Avatar is really ignorant of… well, everything else he’s written. That’s why this a “Failed Utopia” and not a “Utopia.”
That much is true, but looking at SamLL’s contributions it seems that what made him untranslatable 1 was “The Opposite Sex”, which is written in EY’s own voice.
OK, look, literally a five-year-old would say “but what about my friends who are girls”. That the author writes a ‘superintelligence’ who does not address this objection, and a main character who does not mention any, say, coworkers, board-game-playing rivals, or recreational hockey team members who are women, gives an overwhelming, and overwhelmingly unpleasant, impression that women are solely romance and sex objects. That’s not only gross, it’s a very common failure mode of “we’re too smart to be sexist” male tech geeks. And, indeed, downthread you can see other commenters talking about how great a utopia this sounds like.
That is, the point of the entire exercise, i.e., to show one out of a gazillion possible failure modes that can happen if you get FAI almost (but not quite) right—a theme that shows up time and time again in EY’s fiction. Acting like the superintelligence character is some kind of Author Avatar is really ignorant of… well, everything else he’s written. That’s why this a “Failed Utopia” and not a “Utopia.”
How long does the plot take—perhaps ten minutes? We see the main character in a moment of extreme shock, and then, extreme grief—an extreme grief that is vitally important to the moral of the story (explicitly: “I didn’t want this, even though the AI was programmed to be ‘friendly’”). Adding anyone else to the plot dilutes this point.
That’s the bloody point. FAI is hard.
That much is true, but looking at SamLL’s contributions it seems that what made him untranslatable 1 was “The Opposite Sex”, which is written in EY’s own voice.
And the AI would reply “if you had never met said friends, would you still miss them? Sounds like a clear case of sunk cost bias.”