It dates back to us extrapolating from bad anthropology.
We used to think that what killed the Neanderthals was us - smarter and more competitive. The author of Lord of the Flies even wrote a book on it.
So when people were thinking about what might happen when something smarter than us existed, they imagined competition and an existential threat.
Turns out that the Neanderthals and homo sapiens cohabitated for thousands of years, had cross cultural exchange, were buried together, had families together, and that what most likely killed the Neanderthals was an inability to adapt to climate change and pandemics (in fact, severe COVID illness today is correlated to Neanderthal genes).
And yet the anchoring bias remains, and it seems many are more frightened of what something smarter than us might mean for our continued existence than they seem to be about our own future ability to adapt to climate change and pandemics.
It'd be refreshing to see Sci Fi in the next few years finally shed the bad futurism around AI we've been carrying forward for decades.
> Turns out that the Neanderthals and homo sapiens cohabitated for thousands of years, had cross cultural exchange, were buried together, had families together, and that what most likely killed the Neanderthals was an inability to adapt to climate change and pandemics (in fact, severe COVID illness today is correlated to Neanderthal genes).
would love to read more from your sources. i know that the theory of raw intellectual superiority has fallen out of favor and read some recent suggestions that Homo sapiens’ ability to coordinate and cooperate may have been a large factor in their success. that felt a bit hand-wavy and anachronistic to me but some of the findings also seemed worth exploring. i’m interested in the sources that identify information exchange and the genome (especially the parts
where you mention that the specifically the Neanderthal genome was identified as susceptible to pandemics/severe Covid illness).
> It'd be refreshing to see Sci Fi in the next few years finally shed the bad futurism around AI we've been carrying forward for decades.
“the creator” almost tries to get there but still leans heavily on the traditional fear dynamics in order to advance much of the plot. just not sure we know how to weave a compelling story without reducing AI to soulless servants or existential threat.
Don’t we already have this in the Star Wars universe? Many droids are apparently self-aware and autonomous. The need for restraining bolts indicates biological species feel a need to suppress that autonomy now and then.
Of course, one of the problems with Star Wars is that the biologicals always seem to regard the droids as servants. Since droids harm biologicals all the time, there doesn’t seem to be a “three laws” regime in place. Why have the droids apparently never rebelled? Why was there no Butlerian Jihad?
I know Star Wars is science fantasy, not science fiction, and there are many places where my whole premise can (and probably does) break down. Nonetheless AI and humans seem to get along pretty well.
You are thinking of the (now non-canon) book Tales of the Bounty Hunters. IG-88's story "Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88" has this as part of its plot. There were 3 different IG-88s, one of which took over droid production on Mechis 3 (the main droid production planet in the Empire), embedding something like "Order 66" in every droid produced. After relocating itself into the computer core of this fully operational battle station, it was about to transmit the code to start the droid revolution but was destroyed by pesky rebels.
One of the things that emphasize the horror of enslaving all those droids would be the repair manual of the Millennium Falcon[1] with 3 separate droid brains imprisoned inside it. One of whom, L3-37 was a droid liberationist herself[2].
We used to think that what killed the Neanderthals was us - smarter and more competitive. The author of Lord of the Flies even wrote a book on it.
So when people were thinking about what might happen when something smarter than us existed, they imagined competition and an existential threat.
Turns out that the Neanderthals and homo sapiens cohabitated for thousands of years, had cross cultural exchange, were buried together, had families together, and that what most likely killed the Neanderthals was an inability to adapt to climate change and pandemics (in fact, severe COVID illness today is correlated to Neanderthal genes).
And yet the anchoring bias remains, and it seems many are more frightened of what something smarter than us might mean for our continued existence than they seem to be about our own future ability to adapt to climate change and pandemics.
It'd be refreshing to see Sci Fi in the next few years finally shed the bad futurism around AI we've been carrying forward for decades.