YHK - yet another hacker news clone

We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970

75 points speckx 2 hours ago 61 comments

rbanffy 2 hours ago | parent

At least it’s a good movie with a happy ending. I can imagine a dozen worse ways to end that story.

devindotcom 1 hour ago | parent

Either that or The Parallax View. Or of course Idiocracy.

pixl97 1 hour ago | parent

Before 2006 everyone thought the end of the world would be the Terminator. After everyone thought it would be Idiocracy.

Turns out it is both at the same time.

krisbolton 1 hour ago | parent

Check out The China Syndrome. I went on a never-seen-before 70s binge a while back and watch Colossus, Parallax, China Syndrome and Three Days of the Condor. Odd mix, but good.

atmavatar 37 minutes ago | parent

We cannot be living in Idiocracy. In the movie, President Camacho actually cared about solving the problems facing his citizens, finding the smartest person on the planet and putting him to work to fix them. It's also worth noting that nearly all of said problems were the result of ignorance rather than malice.

In reality, Trump is deliberately exacerbating existing problems and creating new ones, perhaps as a smokescreen for all he's doing to enrich himself and his buddies at the expense of the rest of us.

ape4 1 hour ago | parent

Idiocracy

deadnomore 1 hour ago | parent

My only gripe with Idiocracy is the idea that stupid people make stupid children. I know plenty of smart people who have come from brain dead parents.

12ah431 1 hour ago | parent

AI doesn't need the missiles. 50% of the online population are so dumb that they are under the spell of the AI sirens and don't function without them.

Way less offline, but the 50% have too much influence and money.

74938363202 11 minutes ago | parent

Mentally challenged luddites like you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the directions printed on the heel.

Quartzium 1 hour ago | parent

May be a controversial take but I see the highest chances of everyone's survival under the rule of such a system, which has power over all humans.

We are many because we still need eachother. When the people who control the technology can fully replace human work, that will change the oldest of games we played. I highly doubt "the pleb" will make it for long when they are simply not needed for work or ... something.

The only people who will be "making it" to the glorious future will be the ones who do have full control over such a system, and only them, since they won't need anyone else. I think the only chance of the rest of us is precisely with such a system taking full control out of human hands.

If not, it quite obvious how it will work out for the rest of us, and why.

ant6n 1 hour ago | parent

Maybe we do need some benevolent technocratic dictator… somebody very wise…

Quartzium 56 minutes ago | parent

With human benevolent dictators it doesn't work for long. The weak point is that particular human. Which is an argument for why what any particular "billionaire" says today is irrelevant.

Their promises mean nothing, what matters is the game strategy and the equilibrium. Not what they promise to do, or not do.

So, with a hypothetical entity that knows best than any human, or any group of humans, it's hard to argue for human control. Because the humans who have control want it for a few quite particular reasons, and it rarely has to do with the benefit of everyone else.

nick__m 11 minutes ago | parent

as Zaphod Beeblebrox said "anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

krapp 53 minutes ago | parent

There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator. It is a contradiction in terms.

Quartzium 51 minutes ago | parent

Why? There will always be a clash between personal and group benefit. A dictator implies power over individual for the group's well-being.

For example, you want to steal the group's resources, and the dictator has power over your actions and forbids it. But you can argue that's bad for you, sure.

krapp 42 minutes ago | parent

Any political position with absolute, unchecked and centralized power reduces the populace to little more than slaves, without rights or self-determination outside the whim of the dictator. "power over the individual for the group's well being" doesn't describe dictatorship, it just describes the concept of a state.

It doesn't matter whether the master chooses not to abuse their slaves, the evil is in the institution itself. Or to quote CS Lewis:

    Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
>For example, you want to steal the group's resources, and the dictator has power over your actions and forbids it.

That's just a law. We don't need dictators to make laws against theft. We already have such laws.

Quartzium 32 minutes ago | parent

>Any political position with absolute, unchecked and centralized power reduces the populace to little more than slaves, without rights or self-determination outside the whim of the dictator.

*Human dictator.

>That's just a law. We don't need dictators to make laws against theft. We already have such laws.

They are yet not enforced in important cases. Which is typical for humans having power.

Again, I fail to see any possible argument against a non-human ASI dictator. Dictator here implies the power, outside of human control. Why would you be against that? Again, considering the ASI would indeed be ... ASI, it would know and understand better than any group of humans ever could hope they would be able to.

Unless, you want the freedom to have more power than other humans, or the freedom to take their resources. I cannot see a justification against it. Again, considering it's looking for all of our interests, as a group. Maximizing every individual's quality of life.

krapp 12 minutes ago | parent

> Dictator here implies the power, outside of human control. Why would you be against that?

Absolute power, itself, is the problem. It doesn't matter if a machine wields it, or humans, or God Almighty. Humans are not property.

> Unless, you want the freedom to have more power than other humans, or the freedom to take their resources. I cannot see a justification against it.

That you can't even comprehend an argument to the contrary which doesn't imply the other party is morally corrupt or evil in some way is very troubling. As is the absolute faith you place in the benevolence of "ASI" versus any human agency. Your argument seems fascistic to the core.

I'm glad I'll probably be dead before the world you describe arrives, if it ever does.

plandis 33 minutes ago | parent

A dictator could also decide the best thing to do is to mercilessly torture you to set an example so society behaves. Better to harm one individual than many, after all. They might even weep for your suffering but will still go through with it.

AngryData 32 minutes ago | parent

It certainly may be true, but I would ask, is a bit higher survival chance worth the costs? If humanity is so incapable of self governance and individual judgement and freedoms, should survival even be the goal? I would fight and die over certain principles and human rights and ideals, should humanity in general do the same thing, even to the ultimate end?

Unless another intellegence can provide a literal utopia, I will always be pro-human judgement and control. If we kill ourselves from it then so be it, we will have earned it.

EA-3167 11 minutes ago | parent

Controversial implies something other than near universal revulsion at the notion. What you’re experiencing is the consequence of being in a very small, very intense bubble that believes increasingly unhinged things because doing so correlates with a profit.

I wouldn’t dignify the notion of a stochastic dictator with the title of controversy anymore than I would any other religious or personal delusion.

Animats 1 hour ago | parent

I thought everyone in AI, and most HN readers, had seen "Colossus - The Forbin Project" by now.

If you haven't, here it is: [1]

Modern trailer: [2]

Spoiler: At the end, Colossus personally addresses Forbin, and tells him that the world, freed from war, will create a new "human millennium" that will raise humankind to new heights, but only under its absolute rule. Colossus informs Forbin that "freedom is an illusion", it was better for all that he dominated humanity than humans dominating humans, and that "in time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love". Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"

And that's it. Colossus is in charge.

[1] https://archive.org/details/colossus-the-forbin-project-1970...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0bpRo6V1Xg

troupo 1 hour ago | parent

> I thought everyone in AI, and most HN readers, had seen "Colossus - The Forbin Project" by now.

You assume anyone in AI reads or watches anything beyond some current pop-culture, and even then it's unlikely. You can see it in the way they talk, or approach problems, or in their opinions.

Quartzium 59 minutes ago | parent

It's not the history of another form of intelligent life following the same path, to draw any meaningful conclusions. It's a movie.

Let's consider the ending:

>Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"

That signals a human who wants to take some other human's share, by ... means. He wants that freedom. As do all the people who are now controlling this tech, and our lives to some degree. Of-course they want that freedom.

mossTechnician 47 minutes ago | parent

I've seen much of the AI industry, from CEOs to their whistleblowers and lobbyists, basically repeat the premise of this movie - that AI will become powerful and benevolent/malevolent. They don't seem to care which one is talked about, as long as "powerful" remains a silent assumption.

troupo 37 minutes ago | parent

Yes, they repeat the premise of the movie, but it doesn't mean they've seen it ;)

schiffern 8 minutes ago | parent

How terrible. They might miss out on the great wisdom of the guy who wrote The China Syndrome.

I wonder if people who make this argument hear themselves? Hollywood movie moralizing is far from universally praised, after all.

iririririr 27 minutes ago | parent

exactly. Everyone grew up under the propaganda of liberalism and ayn rand powerful benevolent genius.

they idolatre Iron Man/stark like a god.

74938363202 15 minutes ago | parent

If only more people saw the light and joined you in worshipping Stalin and Mao.

Real socialism just has been tried yet. And further 145 million dead is a small price to pay for the socialist utopia.

gwbas1c 1 hour ago | parent

I watched it many years ago when Netflix was DVD-by-mail and had everything.

It really was an enjoyable movie.

amelius 1 hour ago | parent

I mean after thousands of years we have finally freed ourselves from religion, God, and now we create a creature that is smarter than us? It's pretty stupid if you think about it.

bamboozled 1 hour ago | parent

We haven't even come close to freeing ourselves from God or religion, the biggest religious fanatics are running the world now through US government capture.

Peter Thiel comes to mind.

Quartzium 53 minutes ago | parent

>Peter Thiel comes to mind.

I think in his particular case he's merely trying to play the players. Doubt he's into any of that.

bamboozled 3 minutes ago | parent

People need to believe it for him to be able to use it as a weapon...whether he believes it isn't necessary, the people he wants to control / influence do.

People think Trump (who IMO works for Thiel et al through donations) is the messiah.

icedchai 57 minutes ago | parent

Not quite. AI is the new "god" for many. All seeing. All knowing. Just the other day I said something that contradicted Claude. Then I heard, "but Claude told me..." Then I sent a screenshot of the actual thing we were talking about.

AngryData 26 minutes ago | parent

I wouldn't say we were freed from religion. For many people we just became potent demi-gods within the pantheon.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 20 minutes ago | parent

Maybe this is where freeing oneself from God leads. The question then would be - are you better off?

xboxnolifes 3 minutes ago | parent

I'm not sure how one can be cognizant of world events and think we've put religion behind us.

vapel 57 minutes ago | parent

1960s cybernetics inspires fascinating fiction like Neuromancer and Snowcrash.

Sci-fi films of the 70s and 80s recreate these stories as pastiche and trope.

Now people who grew up on those movies exclaim that life is imitating art.

We watch too many movies.

Life isn't a movie.

pessimizer 51 minutes ago | parent

Sci-fi films from the 70s and 80s were not recreating stories from the 80s and 90s.

dogmatism 49 minutes ago | parent

Are you saying neuromancer and snow crash are the antecedents?

Because they were published in 1984 and 1992 respectively

Maybe I didn’t understand

vapel 32 minutes ago | parent

I'm just saying we're movie-brained.

There's no direct lineage.

FrustratedMonky 57 minutes ago | parent

Saw it 2 years ago, when ChatGPT just came out. Was Legit Scary.

bamboozled 54 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, I guess no one could've predicted this...

vvern 51 minutes ago | parent

Even more insane is XAi’s big datacenter project is called Colossus!

https://x.ai/colossus

pixl97 49 minutes ago | parent

Won't be long before a data center is officially named "Torment Nexus"

disposition2 24 minutes ago | parent

Unless something has changed recently, I believe they are still using gas turbines to power it

analog8374 41 minutes ago | parent

Thanks. Always looking for good sci-fi

nowittyusername 41 minutes ago | parent

Colossus is not obscure... also I like the premise of that film, eventually we learn that colossus did all those things to save humanity, so was a great twist IMO.

JoeAltmaier 35 minutes ago | parent

I think AI may be the salvation of mankind. The humans in charge don't 'scale' well when their authority expands to billions of people. Humans just can't resist flattening the data and using notions and biases to make decisions that don't fit well.

jayd16 25 minutes ago | parent

LLMs are distilled bias. Its not like they're a classical AI being of pure logic.

Quartzium 12 minutes ago | parent

Not LLMs. They will eventually move to neuromorphic hardware.

And I think "pure logic" is somewhat downplaying what it will actually be. I'd use "reason" instead. "Pure logic" sounds sterile and robotic in a sense, implying it would mess up because it's missing that "emotional craziness". But what got us here is reason, not emotional behavior. And you could theoretically add any human aspect that it required to make "good decisions".

hypercube33 23 minutes ago | parent

Oh the Hitchhikers guide is also a good movie. 42

EA-3167 13 minutes ago | parent

It’s fascinating to watch the depth of True Belief increase as the obvious signs of impending financial doom increase as well. Reminds me of Festinger’s work with the comet cult, although I suppose the “getting paid to believe” aspect is stronger here.

Hikikomori 10 minutes ago | parent

Socialism would work under an agi.

tim333 2 minutes ago | parent

I think it could work quite well if you don't get over ambitious with it. Claude with a publicly available prompt to follow a sensible publically available and voted on might do better than the orange wonder.

meander_water 20 minutes ago | parent

> The most prophetic movie of all time

I think we need to collectively get our heads out of our asses. The world is literally flying headfirst into an unimaginable crisis (food and water shortages, loss of inhabitable land, massive inequality, power shortages) via human induced climate change.

We won't have the luxury of having enough power to even keep an AI alive for more than 5 minutes. People need to get a grip and deal with real problems.

foxglacier 12 minutes ago | parent

Don't you ever wonder why you can't quantify those predictions and what they would look like if you did? They're all things that already occur and have always occurred to some extent, what's the difference?

meander_water 10 minutes ago | parent

You absolutely can quantify them. We've been able to model the consequences for decades

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

g051051 16 minutes ago | parent

I knew even before clicking what movie (and before that, book) the headline was talking about.

ahefner 5 minutes ago | parent

Interesting. I wonder if Harlan Ellison read Colossus before writing I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.