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7thWave AI Assistant

As we approach the end of this sequence of posts about AI and Folklore, I can see there are two classes of issues associated with AI.

One class is the question of whether Artificial General Intelligence is possible.  AGI are self-aware programs that can make decisions according to their own priorities.  Skynet in the Terminator films might be an extreme example, where a self-aware system gets out of hand and there are plenty of examples of similar creations in folklore, eg Frankenstein’s monster.  My take on this is that AGI is most likely not possible but the real danger is ascribing sentience to systems that are not sentient.

The other class revolves around the question of what would AIG be like if it existed.  I’m not aware of any known and proven alternative intelligences, although folklore is full of them.  An example from this sequence might be Ashen Eye, for example.

Ashen Eye is a rather bleak example, a fairy so ancient s/he is bored with the world and so plays cruel tricks on people.

Frieren is a similar example, also from Japanese anime.  Frieren is an elf and she is about 1000 years old, give or take.  Well over 100 years previous to the story, she joined a group of adventurers, who over 10 years found and destroyed the demon king. 

Her companions were a human hero, a human cleric and a dwarf.  The two humans are now dead, from natural causes.  The hero, Himmel, it turns out was in love with Frieren but this truth only dawns on her almost 30 years after his death.  For her time passes differently, it’s not only that her friends die and she lives on but time passes differently from her perspective.  The decade with Himmel and the others passed quickly for her and then she didn’t realise her friends were aging so fast.

She travels again now with new companions and as they move around the countryside encounter people and places she visited on her last quest.  A child is now an old man, who dies soon after her second visit.  Statues commemorating the achievement of her group of adventurers.  Other statues of heroes from way back, whose names and achievements are forgotten.  An old dwarf friend, with whom she wants to spend a decade except that her companions insist, only a week.

There is something very moving watching Frieren move around, encountering memories and remembering things she has forgotten.  Contemplating love lost.

AGI would make decisions in minute fractions of a second.  What is a second for us might seem like years to AGI.  Might it be lonely?  How can its consciousness adjust to its radically different perception of time?  Unlike Frieren, who needs to be reminded of incidents from her past, would AGI have instant recall? 

Whilst an intelligence able to make decisions in fractions of a second could be dangerous, eg in charge of weapons systems, maybe its isolation would create unexpected problems.  Its world would seem unresponsive and impossibly slow-moving.  This would set up impossible barriers to understanding our world.  The problems we passed to it would not make any sense.  Even now with AI as we know it, we can see AI is an artist that doesn’t know what it’s depicting.  We will all have seen people with three arms or extra fingers.

Communication may be possible but understanding seems a much harder destination for our technologies.

This is the twenty-third in a series of posts about AI and Folklore.  I define Folklore as inclusive of religious stories and some from modern popular culture.  Minerva assists in all the posts, sometimes without attribution! 

The first post in the series is Life with Minerva.  The last post was The Witch Craze and the next and final is The Eternal Golden Braid.  If you press the button marked "Follow", you'll receive notice of new posts.

As always, please comment.  As well as your insights into AI and Folklore, I'd appreciate suggestions of stories I might cover.  These could be from folktales, myths, religious stories as well as general literature. 

Minerva tells me there are loads of statues of her.  Many are lost and decayed.  This is one she knows about that no one has found as yet.  It shows how important she used to be - oh how the mighty have fallen!