I enjoyed this. It is well considered. Although Lovecraft tells stories that are hostile to AI, so I find using his stories as examples to be kind of funny.
The shoggoth metaphor skips the central thesis of most all Lovecraft works outside of the Dream Cycle. No one benefits from reaching too far (or deep, depending on your perspective) into the unknown. Even godlike extraterrestrial civilizations of immense age and achievement are vulnerable to hubris.
The shoggoth are the product of the Elder Things messing about with technology they didn’t understand. They believed the shoggoth, as technology they had created, could be controlled. It worked for a while, but eventually damned their civilization as they continued empowering the technology to solve problems created by the technology. In the AI context, the shoggoth are the AI, humans are the Elder Things.
In the Lovecraftian world, the only way to protect humanity from technological doom is the elimination of all who pursue dangerous technologies and the destruction of the tools that enable the technology. If it can’t be destroyed, the technology must be hidden away, occulted. Those who occult the technology are the closest Lovecraft comes to good guys.
Long before contemporary readers attempted to shoehorn concepts of social commentary into stories that weren’t The Street, Lovecraft had a simple message. Do not meddle in things you do not understand. If you understand, then you would know not to meddle. The best, and exceedingly unlikely, case is a greatly extended life spent snorting mummy salts or slurping bovine smoothies in dank cellars in constant terror from it all ending. Maybe having your brain encapsulated in a metal cylinder and living a VR existence that can never end, no matter how horrific it gets as you approach the inevitable eternity of drifting through the void of space or buried in a mineshaft.
Invoking Lovecraft is a call to arms against technology and those who pursue it.
I enjoyed this. It is well considered. Although Lovecraft tells stories that are hostile to AI, so I find using his stories as examples to be kind of funny.
The shoggoth metaphor skips the central thesis of most all Lovecraft works outside of the Dream Cycle. No one benefits from reaching too far (or deep, depending on your perspective) into the unknown. Even godlike extraterrestrial civilizations of immense age and achievement are vulnerable to hubris.
The shoggoth are the product of the Elder Things messing about with technology they didn’t understand. They believed the shoggoth, as technology they had created, could be controlled. It worked for a while, but eventually damned their civilization as they continued empowering the technology to solve problems created by the technology. In the AI context, the shoggoth are the AI, humans are the Elder Things.
In the Lovecraftian world, the only way to protect humanity from technological doom is the elimination of all who pursue dangerous technologies and the destruction of the tools that enable the technology. If it can’t be destroyed, the technology must be hidden away, occulted. Those who occult the technology are the closest Lovecraft comes to good guys.
Long before contemporary readers attempted to shoehorn concepts of social commentary into stories that weren’t The Street, Lovecraft had a simple message. Do not meddle in things you do not understand. If you understand, then you would know not to meddle. The best, and exceedingly unlikely, case is a greatly extended life spent snorting mummy salts or slurping bovine smoothies in dank cellars in constant terror from it all ending. Maybe having your brain encapsulated in a metal cylinder and living a VR existence that can never end, no matter how horrific it gets as you approach the inevitable eternity of drifting through the void of space or buried in a mineshaft.
Invoking Lovecraft is a call to arms against technology and those who pursue it.