Melllvar

E099: PROGRAMMER IS OVERLY POLITE

My thought process while reading this:

1. tsk too bad the institute couldn’t take the joke
2. Good on Goodall for being a good sport about it
3. See? It all worked out in the end for everyone
4. Goddammit

Man it sure is crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.

Nougat and flame.

I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

I always imagined his robes were iridescent, like a soap bubble or mother of pearl.

The problem is that an AI built to maximize paperclips might conclude that converting the planet to paperclips is an acceptable cost of maximizing paperclip production. It might understand why humans think it’s bad to convert the planet, but disagree. It would need to be explicitly programmed to prioritize human life over paperclips.

otherwise we would just switch it off

If it were super-intelligent, it could probably trick us into leaving it turned on.

A paperclip maximizer driven by self-preservation? What could possiblie go wrong?

chef’s kiss

The problem is that you’re using Windows 95.

Are there examples of censorship or prior restraint you’d like to highlight?

Ctrl-F “plato”

Required reading

?

Left-to-right, top-to-bottom:

1. From the TNG episode “Darmok”, where Captain Picard has to learn how to communicate with an alien through shared danger.
2. From DS9, the decades-long Bajoran resistance to the brutal Cardassian occupation.
3. From the Voyager episode “Message in a Bottle”, where the holographic doctor has to go outside his comfort zone in order to recapture a federation starship from the Romulans.
4. From TNG, the friendship between human Geordi and the android Data.
5. From DS9, the friendship and subsequent romance between Odo and Kira
6. From Voyager, Janeway’s insistence that Borg drones are still people.