Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. – Frank Herbert, Dune
On Saturday, my Twitter account was locked for twelve hours because a mindless censorship algorithm could not tell the difference between mocking an idea and professing that idea; said algorithm was given power to judge human thought for “acceptability” because Twitter (at the insistence of legions of nitwits) has decided that it’s a good idea to silence wrongthink in the first place. I’ve already pointed out the deep foolishness and simian stupidity of censorship in many other essays, and I’ll be doing so again this year on the last Monday in September, as usual; today I’d like you to think about just how incredibly dumb it is to give machines that kind of power without human supervision or a functional appeals process. Now, I’m not a Luddite; I certainly recognize that there are certain circumstances in which computers can be trusted with limited power (such as controlling an aircraft in flight) provided there is a human around to supervise. Computers are, as Isaac Asimov once expressed it, high-speed morons; they do whatever they’re told to do, exactly as they’re told to do it and for as long as they’re told to do it, very very quickly. The problem, of course, is that they are completely incapable of anything even approximating actual thought, which means that they will follow the most mind-bogglingly stupid (or even self-destructive) orders with the same degree of speed and efficiency as they would obey more sensible directives. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to have their computer infected with a virus should know this, yet people keep happily entrusting more and more of their lives to hopped-up pocket calculators they insist on pretending are “smart”; many of them even think it’s a good idea to let these overcomplicated abaci drive their cars at highway speed or tell them how to write. Computers are useful tools and (usually) dependable servants, but apparently generations of science-fiction writers have failed to pound into the heads of the intellectually lazy what a colossally bad idea it is to accept them in positions of authority.
Not totally sure the Asimov quote is suitible. Yes Asimov may have said that, but in his fiction books, a Robot guides humanity.
In the Elija Baley series we have the Robot Daneel working with the Earth detective Baley. In the Robots and Empire book the final sentence after Giskard’s death, by Daneel was ‘ He was alone – and with a Galaxy to care for’.
These books preceded the Foundation series where the Empire was falling to pieces, and was being rebuilt by the Foundation Nothing in these books mention the Robots, other than there were none. Asimov then wrote a prequel and two sequels to marry the Foundation books with hie Robot books.
In Prelude to Foundation, we find Daneel guiding the Empire as a minster to the emporer. In the last book we find Deneel on the Moon about to die. He had been controling and guiding the human race to Gaia from the days of Giskard’s demise.
These stories don’t exactly chime with the statement from Asimov – Computers are high speed Morons; Of course he may have been talking about his present day machines.
These books were an interesting read for me, especially as I came at them in the wrong sequence, and I eventually read the 6 Foundation books twice over, and then went through the Robot Books and then Elija Baley.
Analysis and fantasy are two different things, and the whole “Foundation” is an authoritarian wet dream.
Recently two 737 Max crashes were likely due to a flight control computer doing exactly what it had been programmed to do. A computer program killed 346 people.
Richard Brautigan’s ironic poem says it far better than any list of.computer driven disasters.