Dave -
Most excellent of you to do this, and what will be your venue for this
class?
Are you familiar with our own Jack Williamson
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Williamson>'s vague parallel work in
his "Humanoids" which began in 1947 with the Novelette: "With Folded
Hands". I do not know if he ever acknowledged an influence in this work
from Asimov's introduction to the "three laws" in 1941? He investigates
the (unintended/unexpected catastrophic consequences of something like
the three laws on humanity, having the human spirit "quelled" by being
"niced" or "safed" near-to-death)
He claims to have written this as a cathartic project to shake off the
existential angst/depression he felt from the (ab)use of atomic weapons
at the end of WWII. Jack was too old to serve in the military when the
war broke out (he was 36?), but instead volunteered to work in the South
Pacific as a civilian meteorologist. He had started his career in
Science Fiction before the term was fully adopted (Scientific Romance
and Scientifiction being precursors according to Jack) with the
publication of a short story "Metal Man" In Hugo Gernsbach's /Amazing
Stories /in 1928. Up until the end of WWII he claims to have been
somewhat of a techno-utopianist, believing that advancing technology
would (continue to ) simply advance the quality of life of human beings
(somewhat?) monotonically.
I hosted Jack at an evening talk at LANL/Bradbury Science Museum in 1998
during the Nebula Awards on the theme of how Science and Science Fiction
inform one another. Jack was 90 that year and had over 90 published
works at that time. His work was always somewhat in the vein of Space
Opera and his characters were generally quite two dimensional and his
gender politics typical of his generation of science fictioneers, yet he
was still loved by his community. His use of this pulpy/pop medium as a
way to investigate and discuss fundamental aspects of human nature and
many of the social or even spiritual implications of the advance of
technology was nevertheless quite inspired (IMO).
He died in 2007 at the ripe young age of 98 and was still producing work
nearly up to the day of his death. In 1998 when I first met him, the
OED was creating an appendix/section of "neologisms from science
fiction" and he was credited (informally?) with having the most entries
in the not-yet-published project. His most famous throwdown in this
category at the time was his "invention" of anti-matter, which he called
"contra-terrene" or more colloquially "seetee" (a phoneticization of the
contraction "CT")! He was also quite proud of being interrogated by
the FBI during the Manhattan project for having written a story about
Atomic Weapons... they wanted to assume he had access to a security leak
until he showed them a 1932(?) short story on the same theme, making it
clear that the ideas of nuclear fission (fusion even?) as a weapon were
not new (to him anyway)... that apparently satisfied them and of
course, he didn't appreciate the full import of their interrogation
until after the war.
Carry On!
- Steve
On 8/9/17 9:05 AM, Prof David West wrote:
For what its worth - I will be teaching a short class next month in
Santa Fe, "Isaac Asimov and the Robots." Two points of coverage: 1)
the robots themselves invent and follow a "Zeroth Law" that allows
them to eliminate individual human beings with a result the exact
opposite of Hawking et. al.'s fears that our creations will not love
us; 2) how the actual evolution of robotics and AI (see Daniel
Suarez'/Kill Decision/ - autonomous swarming drones as tools of war
and death to humans) diverged from the rosy naive 1950s view of the
future that Asimov advanced.
davew
On Mon, Aug 7, 2017, at 09:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote:
It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not
entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least
insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of
"reining it in" are probably not going to fly.
On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda VĂ©lez
<alfr...@covaleda.co <mailto:alfr...@covaleda.co>> wrote:
Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of
the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know.
http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158
<http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158>
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