Five Cautionary SF Tales About Enhanced Intelligence

Enhanced intelligence would be awesome.... right?

https://www.tor.com/2023/05/01/five-cautionary-sf-tales-about-enhanced-intelligence
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jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>Five Cautionary SF Tales About Enhanced Intelligence
>
>Enhanced intelligence would be awesome.... right?

Which leaves out _Colossus_ and _The Two Faces of Tomorrow_.

There's also _The Adolescence of P-1_.

_The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ has cautionary elements of AI as well.

scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>>Five Cautionary SF Tales About Enhanced Intelligence
>>
>>Enhanced intelligence would be awesome.... right?
>
>Which leaves out _Colossus_ and _The Two Faces of Tomorrow_.
>
>There's also _The Adolescence of P-1_.
>
>_The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ has cautionary elements of AI as well.

My bad, I read "enhanced" as "artifical".

On 5/1/2023 9:33 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
> Five Cautionary SF Tales About Enhanced Intelligence
>
> Enhanced intelligence would be awesome.... right?
>
> https://www.tor.com/2023/05/01/five-cautionary-sf-tales-about-enhanced-intelligence

Wow, you found a Charles Sheffield book that I have not read.

And the award winning "Beggars in Spain" series is awesome. I cannot
imagine dealing with a child who never sleeps.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NCC2C36/

Lynn

On 5/1/2023 9:33 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
> Five Cautionary SF Tales About Enhanced Intelligence
>
> Enhanced intelligence would be awesome.... right?
>
> https://www.tor.com/2023/05/01/five-cautionary-sf-tales-about-enhanced-intelligence

Another book down this line is Dennis Taylor's "We Are Legion (We Are
Bob) (Bobiverse)" where a man dies early and his consciousness is
implanted into an AI in a interstellar von Neumann probe. He eventually
replicates himself into hundreds of interstellar von Neumann probes as
Earth fights a devastating nuclear war with a resulting nuclear winter
over hundreds of years.
https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse/dp/1680680587/

Lynn

On Monday, May 1, 2023 at 10:33:24 AM UTC-4, James Nicoll wrote:
> Five Cautionary SF Tales About Enhanced Intelligence
>
> Enhanced intelligence would be awesome.... right?
>
> https://www.tor.com/2023/05/01/five-cautionary-sf-tales-about-enhanced-intelligence

There's also Poul Anderson's 1953 'Brain Wave' wherein all animal life suddenly gets a
5x increase in intelligence.

Pt

On 2023-05-01, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

> Enhanced intelligence would be awesome.... right?
>
> https://www.tor.com/2023/05/01/five-cautionary-sf-tales-about-enhanced-intelligence

The movie _Limitless_ (2011) comes to mind.

_Perry Rhodan_, which is mired in orthogenetic[1] thinking, also
had its own "Homo superior" plot.
There was also the "Spoodie" plot line, set in some nonhuman
empire in a far-off galaxy. The connection to the main PR plot was
only revealed at the end. So a "spoodie" is a particular symbiont
and it improves the host's intelligence. Every citizen in that
empire had to have one. Exactly one. Having more was a capital
crime, and there was a "spoodie hunter" who tracked down such
individuals. (You have one guess what made the spoodie hunter
himself so special.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogenesis
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On Monday, May 1, 2023 at 9:33:24 AM UTC-5, James Nicoll wrote:
> Five Cautionary SF Tales About Enhanced Intelligence
>
> Enhanced intelligence would be awesome.... right?
>
> https://www.tor.com/2023/05/01/five-cautionary-sf-tales-about-enhanced-intelligence
> --
> My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
> My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
> My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
> My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

Depending on exactly how you define 'intelligence', Frank Herbert addressed that in various ways in the _Dune_ series.

In an exchange with John Campbell (which I no longer can recall the source, but it was letters about the Dune series after the first book but before first sequel), Herbert comments that one problem with SFnal supermen is that they tend to be portrayed in the stories as too benevolent, as perceived by the non-uber people around them. (Note that this was decades ago.) I think he particularly had in mind characters like Doc Savage and Dick Seaton. Herbert thought that a more realistic uberman would come across as scary and threatening, even if he was acting for the best in the objective scheme of things.

Herbert, IIRC, used the example of a sick, lame horse, which the vet must put down to spare it needless suffering. Herbert observed that if the horse understood what was being discussed by its master and the vet, it would almost surely disagree with the decision! It would almost surely disagree, even if the vet is right and all the horse has to look forward to is pain and suffering. From the horse's POV, humans are supermen, with perceptions and knowledge and power it can't even comprehend, but even supermen acting in its interest won't necessarily be _perceived_ that way!

The character of Leto II in _Children of Dune_ and _God Emperor of Dune_ is not _exactly_ smarter than other people. But he has ancestral memories going back to the dawn of the human race, and he has access to the knowledge and skills of countless doctors, lawyers, historians, physicists, politicians, businessmen, administrators, chemists, metallurgists, pilots, soldiers, astronauts, etc. That's part of how he was able to merge with the sandtrout to become a physical superbeing, he had the body-sense to analyze his own cells and the necessarily knowledge and skills to direct the transformation.

That vast reservoir of knowledge and skills makes Leto II a genuine superman. He has no peers, other than his sister Ghanima, who he outlives by millennia. Is he benevolent? He believes he is. His goal, as revealed to the reader, is benevolent long-term. But that doesn't make him less terrifying and overwhelming to everyone around him!

Of course, even Star Trek, what with its Eugenics War backstory, can
be put in this category.
It certainly is true that enhancing people's intelligence can be dangerous
for a number of reasons.
The process can go horribly wrong.
The people whose intelligence is enhanced can use their advantage over
other people in selfish and harmful ways.
But in general, making people smarter would seem to me to be an obviously
positive thing, like making people healthier. If people were smarter, they
would make more rational decisions, and so we would have fewer wars and
less crime!

But let's step back for a moment.
Less crime? That seems to make sense, because a lot of crime is committed
by impulsive individuals, and impulsiveness is a characteristic associated with
lower intelligence.
But it's an emotional trait, and so it may be separate from intellectual ability
as such, so something that increased intelligence generally might not
affect an individual's degree of impulsiveness.

Fewer wars? That conceals a rather big assumption. If you start out with a
situation where *all the countries in the world are democracies*, which would
seem to drastically reduce the risk of war to begin with, then making everyone
more intelligent would seem to have the result that these democratic regimes
would be less likely to collapse and be replaced by dictatorships, which would
_then_ menace the world with war.
But if we're not _in_ that ideal starting point, then the invention of a technique
to increase human intelligence might lead to it being first used in a dictatorship
to create scientists who could devise weapons ahead of anything that the rest
of the world has.

John Savard

On Friday, 5 May 2023 at 05:35:11 UTC+1, Johnny1A wrote:
> On Monday, May 1, 2023 at 9:33:24 AM UTC-5, James Nicoll wrote:
> > Five Cautionary SF Tales About Enhanced Intelligence
> >
> > Enhanced intelligence would be awesome.... right?
> >
> > https://www.tor.com/2023/05/01/five-cautionary-sf-tales-about-enhanced-intelligence
> > --
> > My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
> > My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
> > My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
> > My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll
> Depending on exactly how you define 'intelligence', Frank Herbert addressed that in various ways in the _Dune_ series.
>
> In an exchange with John Campbell (which I no longer can recall the source, but it was letters about the Dune series after the first book but before first sequel), Herbert comments that one problem with SFnal supermen is that they tend to be portrayed in the stories as too benevolent, as perceived by the non-uber people around them. (Note that this was decades ago.) I think he particularly had in mind characters like Doc Savage and Dick Seaton. Herbert thought that a more realistic uberman would come across as scary and threatening, even if he was acting for the best in the objective scheme of things.
>
> Herbert, IIRC, used the example of a sick, lame horse, which the vet must put down to spare it needless suffering. Herbert observed that if the horse understood what was being discussed by its master and the vet, it would almost surely disagree with the decision! It would almost surely disagree, even if the vet is right and all the horse has to look forward to is pain and suffering. From the horse's POV, humans are supermen, with perceptions and knowledge and power it can't even comprehend, but even supermen acting in its interest won't necessarily be _perceived_ that way!

In the case of the horse, if it understood the situation
then I think it probably wouldn't be "necessary" to
euthanize it. Adaptations for disability could be
provided. However, if the horse can't tolerate that
situation, or if it can't afford the price of its care, then
euthanasia may be an alternative that the horse prefers.

> The character of Leto II in _Children of Dune_ and _God Emperor of Dune_ is not _exactly_ smarter than other people. But he has ancestral memories going back to the dawn of the human race, and he has access to the knowledge and skills of countless doctors, lawyers, historians, physicists, politicians, businessmen, administrators, chemists, metallurgists, pilots, soldiers, astronauts, etc. That's part of how he was able to merge with the sandtrout to become a physical superbeing, he had the body-sense to analyze his own cells and the necessarily knowledge and skills to direct the transformation.
>
> That vast reservoir of knowledge and skills makes Leto II a genuine superman. He has no peers, other than his sister Ghanima, who he outlives by millennia. Is he benevolent? He believes he is. His goal, as revealed to the reader, is benevolent long-term. But that doesn't make him less terrifying and overwhelming to everyone around him!