George Martinelli
asked
Peter Cawdron:
I just can't seem to find a reason why AI should evolve any of our human emotions, like impatience or desire for anything. Any ideas? I love your writing and ideas !!! Thanks
Peter Cawdron
Good question, George.
In my short story anthology, Hello World, there's a story called The End that deals with this. The basic premise is that basing AI on binary choices will never work (and to be fair, LLMs today avoid this by using probabilities). Life evolved due to selective pressures, but these don't exist for AI.
From the story.... “Life has motive. A lizard warms itself on a rock for a reason. A bird soars through the air not just to get somewhere but to look for food or a mate. Computers have no intrinsic motive. That’s why they cannot approximate life.” ——and a little later in the story—— “Look at us. We’re intelligent. But we’re also selfish. We’re emotional. We’re driven by sexual selection. We’re curious. We’re a contradiction. We’re full of both hope and despair. This is why we cannot write an artificial intelligence program, because intelligence is a response to so many aspects of Nature. A computer can never experience these driving motivations. We can build a learning machine, but it can never learn anything beyond facts. It can never experience life. It simply doesn’t have the innate drive we all naturally share.”
If you're interested, check out Hello World, it's got a lot of great stories in it that explore concepts like this in detail. Thank you for supporting independent science fiction.
In my short story anthology, Hello World, there's a story called The End that deals with this. The basic premise is that basing AI on binary choices will never work (and to be fair, LLMs today avoid this by using probabilities). Life evolved due to selective pressures, but these don't exist for AI.
From the story.... “Life has motive. A lizard warms itself on a rock for a reason. A bird soars through the air not just to get somewhere but to look for food or a mate. Computers have no intrinsic motive. That’s why they cannot approximate life.” ——and a little later in the story—— “Look at us. We’re intelligent. But we’re also selfish. We’re emotional. We’re driven by sexual selection. We’re curious. We’re a contradiction. We’re full of both hope and despair. This is why we cannot write an artificial intelligence program, because intelligence is a response to so many aspects of Nature. A computer can never experience these driving motivations. We can build a learning machine, but it can never learn anything beyond facts. It can never experience life. It simply doesn’t have the innate drive we all naturally share.”
If you're interested, check out Hello World, it's got a lot of great stories in it that explore concepts like this in detail. Thank you for supporting independent science fiction.
More Answered Questions
Rich
asked
Peter Cawdron:
Was very pleasantly surprised to see you wrote a sequel to the Hugh Howey's Silo series. How did this come to pass? Is he done with the series? Quick addendum, I have very much enjoyed your first contact series, and appreciate that you try to incorporate evolving science in your narratives. Thanks
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more