Impression based on a quick skim because that’s all I have time for: It belongs to the genre “AI lab makes an AI, lab members interact with it as it advances, eventually it gets loose and takes over the world”. This is not a genre in which one expects normal literary virtues like character development; the real story is in the cognitive development of the AI. There’s no logical barrier to such a story having the virtues of conventional literature, but if the real point of the story is to describe a thought experiment or singularity scenario, one may as well embrace the minimalism. From that perspective, what I saw seemed logical, not surprising since you actually work in the field and know the concepts, jargon, debates, and issues… The ending I consider unlikely, because I think it’s very unlikely that a ubiquitous superintelligent agent responsive to human need and desire would leave the world going through familiar cycles. This world is just too evil and destructive from the perspective of human values, and if godlike power exists and can be harnessed in the service of human desire, things should change in a big way. (How a poet once expressed this thought.)
Feedback (contains spoilers):
Impression based on a quick skim because that’s all I have time for: It belongs to the genre “AI lab makes an AI, lab members interact with it as it advances, eventually it gets loose and takes over the world”. This is not a genre in which one expects normal literary virtues like character development; the real story is in the cognitive development of the AI. There’s no logical barrier to such a story having the virtues of conventional literature, but if the real point of the story is to describe a thought experiment or singularity scenario, one may as well embrace the minimalism. From that perspective, what I saw seemed logical, not surprising since you actually work in the field and know the concepts, jargon, debates, and issues… The ending I consider unlikely, because I think it’s very unlikely that a ubiquitous superintelligent agent responsive to human need and desire would leave the world going through familiar cycles. This world is just too evil and destructive from the perspective of human values, and if godlike power exists and can be harnessed in the service of human desire, things should change in a big way. (How a poet once expressed this thought.)