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Accelerando (2005)

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Re: Accelerando (2005)

#61

Post by XorNot »

okonomiyaki3000 wrote: post #5

I love this book! The part about the implication of digitized minds and long distance space travel was really eye-opening. It really makes you understand that, no, aliens are not visiting earth.

The entire thing is an amazing exploration of how the concept of time becomes a bit meaningless though with those capabilities: traveling at relativistic velocities for hundreds of years? Several of your backups live out whole lives and also a centuries old lawsuit is still in progress and a lawyer is slowly uploading on your laser propulsion source to talk about it. When you get back everyone will still be around because it's also surprisingly hard to actually die anymore.

Re: Accelerando (2005)

#64

Post by _0ffh »

combobyte wrote: post #52
growt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more fitting is the part of the story where a collective of uploaded lobster minds are involved. I wonder if that was an inspiration for the "OpenClaw" name somehow or just pure coincidence.

It was originally called "OpenClaude" before Anthropic told them to knock that off. Pretty sure "OpenClaw" was eventually picked just to be petty.

Maybe coupled with a nod to manus-mania?

Re: Accelerando (2005)

#65

Post by solstice »

murmansk wrote: post #54

Accelerando is a true masterpiece. Crypto and endless speculation, AI and lobsters, space exploration - all in all just "this is our near future". TBH, I know of just handful of Sci-Fi novels as fundamental and as let's say prophetic as this one. The others to my taste in the same category is Nexus trilogy by Ramez Naam (even if a bit farfetched by now), The Diamond Age (="The Illustrated Primer" is peak AI) by Neil…

I just reread Daemon and Freedom™. Highly recommended. They definitely hit different today than when I first read them in 2010 or thereabouts

Re: Accelerando (2005)

#66

Post by jodrellblank »

FL33TW00D wrote: post #14

Anyone have recommendations on books that can rival the first part of Accelerando in number of prescient ideas about how the near future, pre singularity might look? My own list is: Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon Counting Heads by David Marusek Nexus by Ramez Naam Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge But I'm always on the look out for more! The more predictive the better!

Lovestar by Andri Snaer Magnason (2012) is a good story around ubiquitous advertising, remote work, and veneration of Tech Bros and tech in everyday life gone too far.

For one example, if people are in debt, a debt collector is allowed to force their brain implants to take over their body at random to shout advertising jingles at strangers, to pay off the debt with advertising money.

Re: Accelerando (2005)

#67

Post by lxgr »

growt wrote: post #50
SonnyTark wrote: post #19

Accelerando has prophecies that are coming true and it's scary. Spoiler warning in case you want to read it. The first part's main character basically has the future version of openclaw running in his glasses that let him dispatch agents to do any tasks/research he wants or to autonomously do things for him. -> we are already kinda here He's got such total dependency on his agents that when he loses his glasses he's…

Even more fitting is the part of the story where a collective of uploaded lobster minds are involved. I wonder if that was an inspiration for the "OpenClaw" name somehow or just pure coincidence.

The fact that the OpenClaw creators seemingly missed that parallel tells you everything you need to know about the project.

Re: Accelerando (2005)

#68

Post by collingreen »

embedding-shape wrote: post #53
SonnyTark wrote: post #19

Accelerando has prophecies that are coming true and it's scary. Spoiler warning in case you want to read it. The first part's main character basically has the future version of openclaw running in his glasses that let him dispatch agents to do any tasks/research he wants or to autonomously do things for him. -> we are already kinda here He's got such total dependency on his agents that when he loses his glasses he's…

> Corporations are almost entirely run by AI agents, when they sue each other they use AI lawyers and verdicts are delivered by AI courts, all within milliseconds so they're basically constantly suing each other many times a second in an attempt to overwhelm each other's compute resources. -> this looks on track to happen Woah, sounds dystopian, what gives you the impression that this is on track to happen, is there…

A few current situations that are leaning this way in theme:

- ai facial recognition used by police, detaining innocent people with no recourse or consequences

- ai military decisions made without human in the loop. Double points for the decisions being to kill someone. Anthropic insisting a human should be in the loop for killing decisions is what caused Trump to declare them a supply chain risk.

- ai denial of insurance claims without a doctor in the loop

- ai "plagiarism" detection in college courses failing students

- that one colleague everyone has who throws slop over the wall and just sends any feedback directly to the ai

The thing you mentioned, human judges and harsh penalties for unsupervised ai lawyering, is trying to hold this kind of nightmare back. It will be very hard (and only get harder) for humans to fight through the deluge of slop, especially if the slop is weaponized as a kind of DoS like in the book. I don't expect laws are strong enough to hold this back but I don't know any other tool in our collective toolboxes.

Re: Accelerando (2005)

#69

Post by AnimalMuppet »

SonnyTark wrote: post #19

Accelerando has prophecies that are coming true and it's scary. Spoiler warning in case you want to read it. The first part's main character basically has the future version of openclaw running in his glasses that let him dispatch agents to do any tasks/research he wants or to autonomously do things for him. -> we are already kinda here He's got such total dependency on his agents that when he loses his glasses he's…

> and verdicts are delivered by AI courts

Yeah, I don't see that one. I don't see the legal system, the one that has people with guns to back it, giving up authority to an AI or a group of AIs.

Re: Accelerando (2005)

#70

Post by collingreen »

jdr23bc wrote: post #59
sohex wrote: post #37

Accelerando and The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi (and that series as a whole) are the best examples of how weird the future is going to get I’ve read. Other series like The Culture are amazing too, but the aforementioned feel possible in a way that others don’t. For me, I can see the causal chains leading from here to there vividly in a way that you don’t get with a lot of other sci-fi. That combination of plausi…

Blindsight's near future predictions are also looking more reasonable (aside from the vampires maybe)

Sub in the vampires for equally cold androids from the alien series and you've got it made. We're on the cusp of viscerally exploring blindsight's central theme of what does it look like to have intelligence without sentience.
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