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Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

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Re: Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

#82

Post by superkuh »

By far the best is Simon Funk's "AfterLife". The mystery keeps you on the edge of your seat and the tech jargon and concepts are both detailed and correct which is a rare thing for any fiction. Also,

Charles Stross - "Accelerando"

Daniel Suarez" "Daemon"

Kim Stanley Robinson - "Aurora"

Tobias Buckell - "System Reset"

Re: Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

#83

Post by wpietri »

dasmoth wrote: post #54

Greg Bear wrote a number of books (Slant comes to mind, but there are others) where “Thinkers” play an important role. Not sure how they’ve aged, but interesting in that they predicted AIs as mainframe-scale things with few individual instances, back when I was thinking firmly in microcomputer terms.

For Bear, Queen of Angels and Moving Mars are two that have AIs as major elements. I enjoyed them both.

Re: Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

#87

Post by Udik »

Aron wrote: post #72
Udik wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Permutation City is probably the best hard sci-fi novel I've ever read.

There was some page towards the end I remember being hopelessly lost and never recovered.

You mean yourself or the plot? I think that in the third act Egan added some weaker elements both as a corollary of the idea being explored and as a way of introducing some traditional action, in a novel that is otherwise mostly the setup of an elaborate thought experiment.

Nonetheless, I think the result is extraordinary, because the problems posed, the paradoxes highlighted, and some brilliant insights, are new and valid outside the fictional world created in the novel.

Re: Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

#90

Post by okwme »

okwme wrote: post #89

The Life Cycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang. Can be read for free online here: https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2010/fiction_the...

This feels like the most realistic depiction of the growth of strong AI I've ever read. The emphasis is on training neural nets in the form of raising child-like avatars. The subsequent use and abuse of them feels totally believable. The lack of singularity doomsday hype reminds me of an interview with Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinksy on Recode: https://www.recode.net/2016/6/27/12037248/artificial-intelli...
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