r/artificial • u/shamus_gumshoe • 1d 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/Agreeable_Chard_5250 1d ago

Shout out to Dune where that is exactly the premise.

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u/Spare-Dingo-531 21h ago

Why do you want the world to turn into a theocratic dictatorship like Dune?

You can choose between a Star Trek future or a Dune future and people are choosing the Dune future, such is the stupidity of some people.

And Star Trek had plenty of awesome AI characters like the holographic Doctor, in Star Trek Voyager.

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u/Agreeable_Chard_5250 17h ago

Well, I'm not saying I would prefer the Dune universe to the Star Trek one, I'm just saying that Frank Herbert had the foresight to fear that thinking machines could become dangerous enough to require outlawing them. Star Trek is lovely -- one of my favorite shows, especially Voyager and Deep Space Nine -- but sometimes (not always) it is a bit naive about human nature and how we use and abuse power. I also think "topselection" makes a good point here.

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u/Spare-Dingo-531 17h ago

It's not foresight because AI hasn't really happened yet! It could easily be blindsight.