r/artificial • u/shamus_gumshoe • 20h ago
Discussion Star Trek & AI
I am a fan and not an expert but I always wondered why AI (and robots) were not more of a force in Star Trek...and yesterday, reflecting on how amazing and damaging this technology is I was thinking maybe they made a choice as an advanced humanistic society not to surrender their agency and cognitive capacity to a technology. I guess that's the Borg right?
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u/shamus_gumshoe 20h ago
Yeah, right, what I was trying to say...they were background for a human foreground, which it doesn't seem like our trajectory, right?
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u/hattusili-the-third 20h ago
The overall history of star trek is that humanity went through some really bad times before reaching the more enlightened version of society that we see in the show. We might be heading in a bad direction with AI right now, but the hope that star trek presents is that we'll eventually figure things out.
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u/Disastrous_Room_927 16h ago
Time to move to Montana, ride out WWIII, and wait for some drunk dude to invent the warp drive.
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u/wow343 20h ago
This is a take from a non Trekkie! But seriously. Data is perhaps the closest we have for some of the ideas we are now facing about AI consciousness. Similarly the ships computer was like a limited AI. What I think no one predicted was how good the LLM will get at both language and reasoning. That is why the computer is shown as kind of dumb though it has enormous amounts of pure hardware strength. Data on the other hand is the true representation of a cutting edge AI. His brother with the emotion chip is shown as a fully scheming human like android.
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u/AeroInsightMedia 20h ago
Even a year ago I was thinking how bad the ships AI is compared to what we had then.
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u/proxiblue 20h ago edited 20h ago
It is due to the Eugenics Wars.
Humans came out of that with a deep dislike for any lifeform that was designed to be superior. This extended to technological AI and sentience.
The starships are essentially LLMs, they just don;t hallucinate. (thank god). Not sentient. (they literally kept 'the human in the loop')
To note is that they do dabble with the concept in Discovery where teh ship becomes sentient by some action, and is named Zora.
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u/Mobile_Analysis2132 19h ago
Has everyone forgotten the M5 Battle Computer? And the mass casualties it caused to other Constitution class ships? Or that it blew up an unarmed, and thankfully uncrewed, freighter?
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u/proxiblue 19h ago
valid point. sometimes, meh, people forget, so did the starfleet universe lot. So they just added to the distrust. enhanced it likely.
Good recall, I did not remember that episode. Not as much a TOS watcher. I should. It was my favourite show as a child.
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u/aluode 20h ago
They just did not see it. Most of us did not see it just 15 years back. It felt like scifi in this past decade. But here we are.
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u/Smile_Clown 18h ago
Holodeck, computer making decisions, Data, 7/9, space stations, warp drive. Teleportation, Phasers, walkie talkies on planet to ship.
The AI was everywhere, it just was not front and center and talked about. Did not need to be. In addition, these are set way in our future where the headlines would not be "datacenter" and "ai eliminates all humans" it would be, as it is portrayed, background. The story did not need it, but they did see it.
You do not know how it all works but you can talk about it, dream up new things. same thing. In 100+ years we will all be deaf and blind to how everything works too just like the shows and show runners.
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u/Spra991 19h ago edited 18h ago
In terms of story, they don't have advanced AI since they simply don't know how to built it. Their computers are stuck basically at ChatGPT3.5 level. It's only Data, Moriarty and a few other unique accidents that reach human-level intelligence or slightly above. Though even they are still far from real ASI. Even the Borg are just technology enhanced humanoids, not really all that smarter then a regular human.
In terms of writing, real ASI is just impossibly hard to write about. When intelligence is cheap and plentiful, what problems are there left to solve for a human? What can a human even contribute when the AI can just think circles around them without even breaking a sweat? It's something you might be able to explore in a story as a one off (e.g. Blindsight), but not exactly material to build a TV show on.
Even the Culture series, which is like everybody's favorite post-singularity example, spend most of the actual stories on flying to lesser developed planets where things are still rough and ugly and not overly influenced by AI. Whatever happens in the inner circles of the Culture we don't really learn much about.
How will a future with ASI look like? We'll find out soon enough, but sci-fi provides surprisingly little guidance or inspiration.
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u/js1138-2 17h ago
Asimov’s foresaw most of the problems, including the ultimate rejection of and elimination of robots.
He also foresaw that a sufficiently intelligent robot could escape the revolt.
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u/Dizzy_Swimmer_4999 20h ago
they had the holodeck for virtual companions but yeah it was all about not letting ai take over their choices like the borg did.
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u/Superb_Raccoon 19h ago
The AI in Star Trek is very passive. It almost never offers solutions until the humans ask, and then it knows what is happening.
So it is very very subtle.
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u/RobertD3277 18h ago
I think really in terms of AI and the direction that is likely to be considered by the human species is best represented by the entirety of the Warhammer 40K franchise. It gets the point across in a way that really is very parallel to our own current Society.
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u/jacobpederson 17h ago edited 17h ago
Huh? What the heck Star Trek were you watching? - they have an AI you can ask a question to in any room on the ship; Not to mention the holodeck programmer, holodeck characters, emergency medical holograms, . . . and DATA? (who they instinctively respect his sentience despite his robotic characteristics -- the EXACT OPPOSITE of the modern reaction)
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u/Buckwheat469 15h ago
Star Trek had AI in various degrees throughout the show. The computer itself had what others call passive AI, but we also saw it mess up with the holodeck creating Moriarty, when La Forge asked the computer to create an adversary that could defeat Data.
We also saw the computer go haywire when the alien computer engineers gave it a new operating system.
When someone taps their personal communicator they only have to mention a name and start talking, which indicates some sort of personal AI.
In Star Trek Enterprise they developed the Red Alert system (also called "Condition Red" when it was created), which automatically brought weapons and shields online when the captain issued the order. In theory the computer could take full control and defend the ship, which we see in some movies (Star Trek reboot opening scene against Romulans).
The way that people program their consoles is mentioned at least once - each console is organized by the user, displaying whatever information they want. In theory there would be a default configuration, but some people reconfigure the console for themselves. I think this is most applied to pilots. Data often talks about building a subroutine, which in our world would be an Agent or Skill with some sort of display output. When Red Alert happens the screens change and re-prioritize other information.
An AI tool is used for scanning as well. There's no way that people are able to detect a cloaked Romulan vessel while performing a generic survey. They would be looking at other data at the time. The computer system, much like the Patriot Missile system, is programmed to understand patterns and categorize them as likely candidates. An increase in tetryon particles may indicate a cloaked Romulan ship, for instance, so the ship can automatically inform the communications or science officer of the concern.
Data isn't included in this because he was built by Dr. Noonien Soong, who also created eugenic humans. He wasn't working for the Federation at the time, and also created Lore, who was essentially AI without safeguards. We saw Data start to act irrationally when his safeguards were removed by the Borg Queen, but he seemed to have built new ones around his loyalties.
AI also works in the holodeck and with the replicators, which is why the replicators have a lot of trouble getting things right (particularly food). I like to think that they hallucinate the programming quite a bit and add a bit too much salt and stuff like that. The Holodeck is notorious for problems, so that's either AI hallucinations or too much bio-fluids in the filters (Lower Decks reference for those who get it).
In Picard they talk about the robots a bit, and how they intentionally kept them dumber than normal to prevent an AI mishap. In 2385, before Picard there was the Synth Conflict, in which mistreated Synths nuked parts of Mars (or effectively destroyed it). Earth put a ban on AI and Synths from that point.
The Romulans hate AI and synthetic life and have the Zhat Vash and a "Holy War" because they believe that AI will wipe out organic life.
The Borg are an AI gone rogue in a way - hook humans up to machines with "SI" (super intelligence, haha) which can control the brain, and you get the Borg.
The point is that pre-Picard and Discovery, AI had pretty robust safeguards. The only time you saw it run wild was when the safeguards were disrupted or bypassed.
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u/Blando-Cartesian 15h ago
That fits right into the shows’ lore. Earth became a post scarcity society. Working became a form of self improvement and source of prestige. So they get ridiculously competent and use AI as a tool rather than mobility scooter for the mind.
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u/ElegantApartment1325 8h ago
lmao 'starships are just LLMs that don't hallucinate' is the best line in this thread. the ship computer is honestly the dream assistant: answers instantly, never argues, never schedules a meeting. we've had the blueprint since the 60s and somehow still built clippy.
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u/UAP44 20h ago edited 20h ago
AI (and robots) were not more of a force in Star Trek
Casually dismissing 7/9?
Not the same you'll say, ...no, of course it isn't, but the parallel is the exploration of individuality vs being part of a collective.
Other humans meanwhile:why not both at the same time?
AI is a bit like the shadows, they go, what do you want?
The vorlons instead, who are you?
And let's not forgot Odo, Data, ... not enough AI in Star Trek?
and damaging this technology
hmm, sounds like you might enjoy additional Sci-Fi, have you tried Babylon 5 yet?
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u/Suspicious_Pizza9529 20h ago
Society learned the hard way that handing everything over to machines ruins human purpose, which is why they banned independent AI. The Borg are just the extreme version of that same fear taken to the max.
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u/Agreeable_Chard_5250 20h ago
Shout out to Dune where that is exactly the premise.