Now imagine a “more realistic” setting where humans went through a singularity (and, possibly, coexist with AIs). If the singularity was friendly, then this is an utopia which, by definition, has no conflict.
There is Friendliness and there is Friendliness. Note: Ambivalence or even bemused antagonism would qualify as Friendliness so long as humans were still able to determine their own personal courses of development and progress.
An AGI that had as its sole ambition the prevention of other AGIs and unFriendly scenarios would allow a lot of what passes for bad science fiction in most space operas, actually. AI cores on ships that can understand human language but don’t qualify as fully sentient (because the real AGI is gutting their intellects); androids that are fully humanoid and perhaps even sentient but haven’t any clue why that is so (because you could rebuild human-like cognitive faculties by reverse-engineering black-box but if you actually knew what was going on in the parts you would have that information purged...) -- so on and so on.
And yet this would qualify as Friendly; human society and ingenuity would continue.
There is Friendliness and there is Friendliness. Note: Ambivalence or even bemused antagonism would qualify as Friendliness so long as humans were still able to determine their own personal courses of development and progress.
An AGI that had as its sole ambition the prevention of other AGIs and unFriendly scenarios would allow a lot of what passes for bad science fiction in most space operas, actually. AI cores on ships that can understand human language but don’t qualify as fully sentient (because the real AGI is gutting their intellects); androids that are fully humanoid and perhaps even sentient but haven’t any clue why that is so (because you could rebuild human-like cognitive faculties by reverse-engineering black-box but if you actually knew what was going on in the parts you would have that information purged...) -- so on and so on.
And yet this would qualify as Friendly; human society and ingenuity would continue.