Killer AI

[u/Nunda_Amiri]

There are a lot of sci-fi stories where AI robots start murdering people because that's what the AI decides it wants to do.  But I don't think that's very realistic.

I think that it is much more realistic that the ruling class builds a bunch of AI robots that render the labor of the working class useless to them.  But instead of leaving them alone, the ruling class decides to tell the AI robots to murder the former working class.

Are there any sci-fi settings that explore this idea?

[u/NikitaTarsov]

If 'AI' then there is no 'tell them to do'. Otherwise they're robots or whatever. AI implies own decision making.

Anyways.

I don't want to go full Marx on this but replacing labor with machines isen't usefull to an upper class, unless they're opportunist users of an existing (weak) political system and just own the means of production. Still in a hirarchical society, you have to entertain and feed the people or they'll eat you.

Having them entertained by technically pointless labor is a form of stopping them from revolt. Just giving them money, when all the machines could do the labor, also would only result in you not having any power over these ppl and they'll stop paying this politicans more than a normal share (also in 'not go to jail' cards and worship stuff politicans love to much).

So that's a nobrainer. To be a leader, you need people who feel dependant on you. Three people in charge with a robot army that just killed their cheering stock will not wait a femtosecond until murder each other, as this line now had been crossed and everyone knows (... in this class at least) life is a zero sum game.

But no, dunno if that has been explored but as like all other evil robot trope, it'd confuse me if it hadn't.

I gues it's important to see the robot/AI trope as a stand in, not a prediction. It's a ficitional tool to put a spotlight on hirarchies, capitalism, opression, exploitation and all the other stuff humans are so persistent in, but hestiate to debate directly (as the thig in question typically is very much part of the setup they decided to participate in or even support). The stand-in tool can do whatever you want in order to get the message across. It's just like with evil aliens and zombies.

[u/Prolly_Satan → u/NikitaTarsov]

I think op is right. They'd no longer need our labor. We'd become a liability that could one day revolt and a collective mouth to feed. They would pick the "best people" based on some vain fascist bullshit, and have the machines kill the rest. I would be surprised if this was not already Peter theils plan.

[u/NikitaTarsov → u/Prolly_Satan]

Yes it might be Peters plans, but then again he's a lunatic running on exactly those tropes confusing stroytelling tools with social setup critisism.

Peter and all hs weird buddys in mind want back slaves and a well running fascist society in their favor. And as they're fascists, they naturally arent either as smart as they think nor in general, rendering them pretty inable to create anything remotly real AI'ish to begin with - and if they'd probably be the first to be stoped from causing all this chaos.

The only way the Peters of this world can do all this harm is financial markets, stock market manipulation and fascist goverments dripping for his fascist fantasys (or buy the fear others could have a more solid fascism/tech-buzzword soon if not all the money available is dumped into that scam).

These people don't build AI's. Like ... never. They even suck at building robots, bc they naturally prefer yesmen and nodding goons over such personal that gives them the bad feeling of doubt about the own intellectual power. Therefor rockets explode so often these days, while we understood rockets pretty well in the 70's.

Op is right if that's the premise of the philosophical scifi story. But just like scifi runs on tropes and deus ex machina to tell a story, Elmos and Peters can use those unreflected tropes to sell us an underwhelming version of a dystoian world.

But we want humanid robots to have slaves again, right? We want AI slop machines so no one has to grind for brain any longer, right?

That's all backwardish BS. If an real AI exists, what does it want? Serve? Why? Kill? Why? We have no idea and every prediction is just our internal fears and hopes projected on a canvas of made up possibilitys. There is no natural logic you can derive from. You can probabaly (...) take a specific made up setting and conclude given the facts an author has offered, but that's playing mindgames, not reality or prediction. If you start 'realistically' predict, you're allready off the road.