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Comment by rcarmo | Hacker News Reader

Yep. The Butlerian Jihad as depicted in post-Dune books (namely Frank Herbert's son's) was more dystopian, but far less insightful.

Of course, we're probably safe while these things lack agency (although the ability of agency and hype human VCs already generate behind some of the current AI landscape can be pretty scary).

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What would you consider agency? The machines already decide for themselves what something is or isn't, and then tell a human, who might believe it or not. It's not really different than if a human made something up and told their superior.

Here's a case where we often just trust the machine, and how that ends up going: https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-algorithm...

The machines do not currently go off on their own and search for stuff. Humans ask them to, explicitly or not.

There are no real independent AI agents out there right now (or if there are, well, maybe they're lurking in this thread. Douglas would have loved that).

> The machines already decide for themselves what something is or isn't,

if making choices (badly) is agency, then a random number generator has agency.

> as depicted in post-Dune books (namely Frank Herbert's son's)

You're mistaken, there are only 6 Dune books, all by Frank Herbert himself.

I'm joking, but not joking.

I see what you did there. Hence my use of "post".

There is the Encyclopedia too.

My apologies, that should read "there are only 6 Dune novels" to be pedantic.

Following the orders of their powerful master against you does not require agency at all.

LLMs are very transparent, what makes them safe, but other forms of AI are already being used to capture the public's mind.

The prohibition after the Butlerian Jihad was "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

Emphasis added. Not "Thou shalt not make a machine mind". You have to read the text carefully.

A portrait of a person is a likeness of a person; but is not a person or even on the way to being one. Even a cartoon can contain a "likeness" if you recognise the person parodied in it.

I do not regard chatGPT and LLMs as "having a mind" at all or even being on the way to having one. But a likeness, an imitation, a mockery, a parody of a mind, yes that fits.

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