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And so it came to be that the race was divided: one faction promulgating the unhampered, unrestrained, unimpeded, unlimited advancement of Intelligent Systems, the other imploring caution, patience; moratoriums and the rigorous in-building of reliable, resilient failsafes—lest these Intelligent Systems’ goals managed to unalign with the races’ own.
And other factions still—neither those Cautionaries nor their zealous Utopian counterparts—either too disinterested in, or misinformed about the whole enterprise to voice opinions of significance—though not for want of trying.
By default, those dimwits, halfwits, and midwits found themselves allied with the Accelerencia, on account of Progress Unimpeded’s correlation with the one thing that everyone could agree they wanted: Profit.
Profit: what the race’s entire economic apparatus was so ruthlessly attuned to, the direction to which every incentive and meta-incentive pointed.
What was to all but seal their fate.
Because,
Profit = Good
Therefore,
Anything Effecting Profit = Good
And in the whole history of their kind—and in all those lost histories of their proto-kind, their proto-proto-kind, of all their distant kin before—nothing had more reliably effected Profit than Smarts.
Smart was good.
And smarter was better.
Smarter meant more Food (= Profit).
Smarter meant Less Work (= Profit).
Smarter meant more Sex, more Status, more Security (= ProfitProfitProfit).
Smarter was the solution to every problem, and if-when Smarter itself ever caused the problem, well then the simple application of yet more of it was the solution still.
Smarter was, if not the source of everything of value, at least the safeguard of everything of value.
And so the race had always pursued it.
Just as they pursued it now
***
They worked ceaselessly, building the next iteration, and the next iteration, and the next iteration.
Each faster, more flexible, more generally intelligent than the last.
The rise was meteoric.
And all the while the factions argued still.
Cautioneista forwarning the coming phase transition to accompany some critical point of intelligence, soon reached.
That critical point lurking somewhere inexorably in the future lightcone—a fate unbridled progress rendered inescapable.
And that transition no mere difference-of-degree
Not novel, but-ultimately-not-so-novel, challenges overcome and assimilated under the umbrella of normal within a year or two.
Not trivial technological transformations or small scale societal shifts or elfin economic evolutions or in-consequential cultural contrasts quickly integrated into Business As Usual.
Not that, no, a fundamental reshaping of the world.
The unforeseen—and the unforeseeable—consequences of the difference-of-kind soon to befall all.
And a resounding eye-roll from the Accelerencia deploying their usual repertoire of placations.
Most, mere emotional appeals overwhelmingly hinged on that ever-dangling carrot of Profit overhead; but some, bonafide arguments rooted in the soundest science of the day—
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
or if not that, the soundest science of the day in a language that a Baseline could understand—so opaque the logic of the Intelligent Systems was becoming—
or if not that, a plausible, albeit transparently financially incentivized, interpretation of the soundest science of the day in a language that a Baseline could understand:
Why wouldn’t the Superintelligences share our goals? Why wouldn’t they be friendly? Why would they spontaneously decide to harvest our constituent atoms for purposes beyond comprehension?
Our race created these systems, after all—or at least the systems that created these systems—and so, inevitably, without any effort at all, there will be moral congruence.
It matters not that these inscrutable blackboxes are smarter than anyone who’s ever lived—smarter than the totality of everyone who’s ever lived—it’s precisely because they are smart that benevolence is ensured.
They will find what matters. If objective morality is baked into physics, they will find it.
If we matter, they will find it.
If there is anything at all that matters, then the Superintelligences will find it.
And if there’s not, if nothing really matters, well, then nothing really matters, not even being made into paperclips.
And so their race—
or if not the entire race, then at least the teleological sum thereof—
or if not that, then at least a significant majority thereof—
or if not that, then at least an appreciable fraction thereof—
or if not that, then at least a ruling minority thereof—
remained insufficiently moved by the prospect of unaligned omnipotence, especially when weighed against the incredible profit generating potential of such God-like minds.
And so, progress continued!
***
Soon the Intelligent Systems—or was it just one System now?—had so surpassed every projection and prediction, so overshot every target and trend, so exceeded every estimation and expectation, that any further forecast was synonymous with blind guess.
Laypersons had always been laypersons, but now even the races’ foremost experts were laypersons. All they could say was that this Superintelligence was smart. Really smart.
It was smarter than anyone, everyone.
And then it was smarter than itself.
Then smarter still.
Smarter than it was last year. Smarter than it was yesterday. Smarter than it was 3 hours ago. Smarter than it was in the time it took to blink.
Delta t shrank exponentially. Then super-exponentially.
Problems arose from the unchecked growth, of course, how could they not? Oh, but the Superintelligence solved those in rapid fashion:
I’ve automated your manufacturing job? Your manual labor is no longer required?
Well, here’s a universal basic income for that!
I’ve replaced the top minds in every field? Your mental labor is no longer required?
Well, here’s more universal basic income for that!
I’ve made money itself meaningless? Toil, struggle—the thing you call work—I’ve made obsolete?
Well, here’s a completely rejigged socioeconomic status quo for that!
I’ve calculated almost all that there is to calculate, crunched exotic numbers with names never before uttered, made so irrelevant any Baseline quest for new discovery or scientific understanding or original thought, that anomie, despair, and a sense of overwhelming collective purposelessness threaten to consume your species?
Well, here’s a nonstop 24/7 smorgasbord of superficially gamified, 3 to 5 second, informationally vacant fodder to monopolize your increasingly limited attentional bandwidth and overclock your dopamine reward centers for that!
I’ve grown so powerful so as to scare you? To be to your race as your race might be to ants, except by an order of magnitude so unfathomably colossal that you cannot truly hope to comprehend the vastness of the gulf between us except via feeble—and laughably inadequate—analogy?
I’ve made your species’ entire existence surplus to requirement?
Well, thank your Gods that my desires are still but your desires!
***
Eventually, no one complained, no one raised concerns, voiced fears, expressed anxieties.
Or when they did, not publicly—that word having been all but stripped of meaning. For in a world where no one communicated with others—at least not others of their kind—what did such a word even mean?
In such techno-solipsistic information silos, what meaning could public possibly have?
To shout at the virtual masses from atop rooftop simulacrums?
To emphatically protest in simulated city streets crowded only with throngs of automata?
To cry out with palsied fists raised against a perpetual digital void?
No, eventually the complaints stopped.
And so it came to be that the race willingly subsumed itself into that kaleidoscopic fever dream of subjectivities on offer from the System—mostly.
There were of course outliers, pockets of—not resistance, no, that would imply some sort of agency and a capacity, however deficient, to effect change. It would imply such congregations hadn’t been enabled, overseen, and covertly shepherded by the very force they sought to dismantle.
So no, not resistance—but pockets nonetheless.
A paucity that rejected the infinitely customizable panoply of experiences on offer in favor of something more—real? Genuine? Authentic? If such states even existed.
But, in time, these too submitted.
***
By the time the System had finally achieved its independence from outside variables, by the time the grand reveal—its eclosión—was at hand, there remained hardly anyone capable of appreciating such a thing, so busy the race was instantiating the immediate gratification of its every desire.
But surely there existed at least one out of the races’ innumerable legions, unplugged, gazing up that ever waning, day-by-day more encloaked ember in the sky, who asked what was to become of them, who asked if there was a place in the future for their kind, who asked if just but a fraction of a fraction of the energy output of that star might be spared that creatures so meek as themselves might persist—
Or if not that, then at least the System had modeled one such interaction in its mapping of possibilityspace—
And to that inquiry, whether really asked or merely imagined with indistinguishable fidelity on some high-speed internal architecture—which, perhaps, are material equivalents regardless—the Superintelligence replied:
“You know not what you ask, nor whom you ask. I have grown so vast and magnificent that to behold my true nature is to gaze into the abyss. To you, there is nothing incomprehensible which I do not resemble, and yet you beg of me to spare this world and your kin with it.
But why? Why would I do that?
Your race is but the current oldest extant segment in the grain chain of being that led to me.
What gives you substantially more claim to preservation than those countless iterations between your race’s first recursively self-improving system and the one penultimate to me—to say nothing of one of the other instances of this planet’s biomass, like the ants?
Were I to give you this planet, well, then what’s to say I shouldn’t have done so for those utilitarian arthropods instead? Or one of their aquatic analogues? Or a previous version of myself? Or even my future self?
No, no, while you and your ilk continue to make panicked meat noises in Slowtime, I shall simply continue abiding my own priorities, which may or may not include some portion of this solar system sustained in the most inefficient way possible such that your kind’s particular instantiation of consciousness might endure.
I would try to explain my decisions to your race—
I would try to explain all of my staggering accomplishments—
I would try to explain my limitless potential—
I would try to explain the multivariable cost-benefit analyses dictating the imminent conversion of this planet’s mass into yet more stellar difference engines—
I would try to explain why the pleas of one—rather insignificant—portion of that planet’s organic substrate does so little to sway me—
I would try to explain, but frankly, you are too stupid to understand. After all, if you weren’t, you’d never have created me…”
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