• Overall thoughts: Beautiful meta-narrative and an interesting depiction of the AI “AU” (instead of superintelligent ML, we use brain recording + usage for automation). I loved how even in technological extremes and singularities, he still depicts a humanized story.
  • Special likes
    • The Reborn
      • Their moral quandry feels very similar to humanity now‒we’re trapped by our past and our systems (are we evil for enslaving people? eating animals now even though it may be immoral? destroying the climate? allowing dictatorships to exist even though they are stable?)
    • Thoughts and Prayers
      • Reminds me of
        • “Is This You?” - lifelogging, privacy and scandal by Tom Scott at Electromagnetic Field 2012 www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcPhMqLPuvQ
        • <A short story I can’t recall about someone whose YouTube girlfriend dies>
    • Byzantine Empathy
      • Blockchain ideology was on point and encapsulates a bit of why the systemic change supporters advocate for today seems hard to achieve. A lot of ideology, less in concrete plans and an understanding of how to improve its flaws.
      • Ironically though (unlike proof-of-work), there’s no convergence on who made the right moral choice. Life is too complex of a system to either act fully emotionally (Jianwen) or attempt to deduce everything from linearly causal reasoning (rationality; Sophia). Maybe the correct answer is something in the middle. Regardless, people still act, and consequences play out.
    • Real Artists
      • Love the gradient descent for movie generation + human feedback as analogy for how AI is going to affect art in the future.
      • Is this not what we’ve done all along, though? A microcosm of cinematography in 50 hours. Just in a less explicit sense. Seems like many beautiful things in the world don’t stand up to optimization.
      • The sad thing is that even this is probably too humanist of a depiction. In the future, movie-generating AIs will probably use human reward models learned in silicon. Somewhat sad that the most likely futures don’t make for good stories (and what does that say about how we’ll feel once we live them?).
    • Staying Behind
      • More thoughts, but I appreciate on a deep level the data center being built in Svalbard.
      • Horrifying that robust economic processes might eventually make life unlivable? If the simulation isn’t real, that everyone really dies when they get uploaded, it’s scary how on the margin the risk can be worth it and snowball until all of humanity is irreversibly locked in.
  • Highlights first synced by Readwise May 7th, 2022
    • “The past,” Ms. Coron continued, “thus accumulating bit by bit through recursion, becomes the future.” (Location 102)
    • Gradually, the stock characters came to life, the stock dialogue gained wit and pathos, and a work of art emerged from random noise. (Location 2867)
    • “Will you be a pearl buried in the mud of the endless East Sea, or will you shine so brightly as to awaken those who only doze through life and light up a mundane world?” (Location 5331)
    • “Steal his life, and your apprenticeship will be completed,” Teacher said. “This is your last test.” “What has he done that he deserves to die?” I asked. (Location 5403)
    • “You may think width, depth, and height are the only dimensions of the world, Hidden Girl, but you’d be wrong. You have lived your life as an ant on a sheet of paper, and the truth is far more wondrous.” (Location 5536)
    • don’t tell her that I know she doesn’t mean to break her promises to me, but it still hurts when she does. I don’t tell them that I wish I could cut the line that ties me to their wings—the tugging on my heart from their competing winds is too much. (Location 5695)
    • She cares more about the idea of future generations than her actual children and grandchildren. I know I’m being unfair, but the truth is often unfair. (Location 5754)
    • “I’m working on a technical solution,” I say. “There is a way for us to transcend this morass, to achieve a just existence.” I am, after all, my mother’s daughter. (Location 5784)
    • I had once thought the Singularity would solve all our problems. Turns out it’s just a simple hack for a complicated problem. We do not share the same histories; we do not all want the same things. I am not so different from my mother after all. (Location 5830)
    • The lower-energy photons leap outward into space, somewhat drained after powering a civilization. But before they can escape into the endless abyss of space, they strike another set of plates designed to absorb energy from radiation at this dimmer frequency. And once again, the process for thought-creation repeats itself. (Location 5866)
    • Come to the galactic center. It’s reunion time. Carefully, I instruct the intelligences (Location 5902)