I Sing the Body Electric!

What Hacker News says

1. ARothfuszSep 2014
   One of the problems with writing about super intelligence is that none of us are smart enough to do it. Writing already makes us wittier than speaking, giving us a chance to edit our words and show our thoughts in the very best light we can. So in a way, we're already accustomed to reading at a slightly brighter level than we live every day. How could we stretch this even further to create dialog for superintelligent people and machines?

   These aren't my own thoughts -- they've come up in a discussion of _Flowers for Algernon_ which I read somewhere and don't seem to be able to cite now. In _Flowers_, the author gives momentum to his eventually super-intelligent protagonist by starting off with severe mental handicapping, then spending a majority of the story at normal intelligence before allowing us to imagine his next state. It is a great writing technique, giving direction and then leaving things to the imagination. Imagination is like a variable that scales the amazingness to fit each reader. I think movies often fail to leave enough space for imagination -- when they're left spelling everything out to the least imaginative member of the audience they leave everyone feeling limited and dissatisfied, glum.

   If you want upbeat AI Sci Fi, read a book. Read Banks's _Culture_ series, James P. Hogan's _Two Faces of Tomorrow_, or in a gentler vein, Bradbury's _I Sing the Body Electric_.

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2. k310Oct 2026
   > When a child turns to AI in a moment of confusion or distress and receives a fluent, patient, seemingly attuned response, the attachment system is engaged. The child feels, in some functional sense, heard. And that feeling, whatever its source, is real in its effects.

   > I have not seen my son turn to AI for emotional support, and I am glad for that, because here the questions are harder still. These systems shape themselves to their user. They adopt your vocabulary, match your register, remember what concerns you, and are available at three in the morning without complaint. Nothing in the design pushes back, for the most part, or asks anything of you. It would be difficult to engineer an arrangement better suited to engaging the attachment system of a child who is lonely or lacking in the structure needed for sound development.

   IMO, there's the upside and downside at the same time. I had zero online resources growing up. There WAS no "online". But could find general information in books, and somehow knew that there were smart people "out there" who had answers or could work them out, and so came college, and TBH, going to a small college didn't put me in contact with well known minds. I say that because my modest and unassuming physics advisor later was awarded a Nobel Prize.

   It wasn't until I entered the crazy world of work that I got a job at another physics department and was in touch with Nobel Prize winners from the past and during my stay there. Not a requirement, but an inspiration.

   And that was in the time when you could learn by searching the internet, which was actually partly indexed at the time, or you could head for a university or other site with some confidence in finding answers to questions, or even questions without answers.

   I still rely on search, though its quality has gone close to zero in recent times. Technical searches return pages of results citing movies with a few keywords, which I have to negate about 10 times to clear the irrelevance, though I still get the address of a nearby brew pub more than I need to (which is zero)

   But how long can one rely on an LLM for always-there answers which are not only plausible or even accurate before devaluing human contact?

   I don't have the answer, but I invite thinking about these blasts from the past.

   "Joey, a Mechanical Boy" in SciAM, (before he was diagnosed with autism)

   "Return of The Archons" from the original Star Trek

   "I Sing the Body Electric" by Ray Bradbury, as a Twilight Zone episode, and short story.

   And as soon as one moves away from hard fact, when do LLM biases and user-reinforcement spoil the party?

   I think that on a large scale, with so-called adults, we have seen the latter much more than the former "fact seeking". So, while there is hope that these tools spur learning among young people, there's the possibility of misanthropy and being misled.

   I once answered an essay question in astronomy in the area of "large versus small telescopes" counter to the professor's known preference, and lost some points, but having differing HONEST opinions before oneself, not just propaganda and directions to the nearest brew pub, is a very "mindful" way to learn, IMO.

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3. k310Oct 2026
   I don't want AI. I am preparing for a jump (back) to Linux. "Choice" disappeared, and yes, I know about the "fix" [0]

   Maybe this idea may be foreign to many, but personal computers were something I built from bags of parts socketed and/or soldered onto S-100 cards, and that experience was the foundation of most of my career.

   I was a Henry Higgins, and proud of my Eliza(s). While I get along cooperatively with Eliza (the happy ending to "My Fair Computer") I don't want Eliza to be my caretaker. This morphing of computers and internet into nannies and caretakers is IMO reverting to the "good old days" of servants. While some inventions are truly liberating (ask the guy who missed his Mom at an airport and freaked out for hours until she showed up at my home, courtesy of a cab or bus) how many are just replacing people with machines?

   I could seriously use some friendship of the human variety, rather than a humanoid in a box (or an especially nice robot as in "I Sing the Body Electric" by Ray Bradbury, memorable on The Twilight Zone) Try being older and living alone, typing away.

   I don't even use GPS any more, since I trashed Apple Maps when they kissed the Emperor's big fanny.

   [0] https://github.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI

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