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Do Androids Worship Electric Gods?

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" ...to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before its data banks had been connected up it had started from first principles with 'I think therefore I am' and had got as far as deducing the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off. " Douglas Adams; The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy The times we're living in; they're just gettin' stranger. In 2022, a Google employee claimed that A.I. was "sentient".  Engineer Blake Lemoine made headlines at the time when he announced his belief that Google's then-embryonic A.I. system was developing "feelings" and was showing signs of consciousness. As a potentially sentient being, he said, its needs and wants should be respected. Google issued a statement at the time, strongly denying Lemoine's claims and confirming they had swiftly fired the delusional guy. The very idea that A.I. mi...
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The Awokening

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Part One: Gloria Steinem in Hell Gloria Steinem is dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The news of her death at the beginning of this month was not exactly unexpected (she was 92; it was going to happen at some point) but I confess it hit me harder than I had thought it would. To begin with, there were the portents. For decades, Steinem has been the face and the voice of the women's movement in the US and beyond, tirelessly striving to demonstrate that a person's gender does not need to be the be-all and the end-all of their identity. It's thanks to her that we no longer simply assume that marriage, motherhood and domestic subservience must inevitably mean giving up any semblance of a life or a career or a vocation. Remember Mary; Donna Reed's character in It's a Wonderful Life ? When George glimpses the dystopian alternate reality of a world in which he had never existed, Mary is shown to be a miserable "Old Maid" (the exact term t...
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I, Robot, Am a Camera.

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Part the First: Everyone Hates ChatBots If you read the news, or watch the news, or have been in the presence of the internet at any point in the last few weeks, you have probably heard that AI is planning to kill us all. It's a rather outlandish prediction, and one that is notably short on particulars or specifics. Indeed, a few news outlets are finally beginning to ask the obvious questions - like how exactly is a Large Language Model supposed to exterminate eight billion human beings...? But these questions are muted and cautious after nearly two weeks of largely uncritical reporting.... and much hysteria on the part of the general public. " As people warn that A.I. could destroy humanity, they are light on examples of how, " said the New York Times over the weekend. And the BBC quoted an unnamed tech worker who said that their " amusement at the new moment of existential AI fears largely stemmed from how little detail had been provided by its proponents to defen...
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