this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
60 points (95.5% liked)

Science Fiction

13644 readers
5 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

  1. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
  2. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
  4. Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
  5. Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

For no reason whatsoever here's a proposal for a scale for the threat to humanity posed by machine intelligence.

1 | SPUTNIK - No threat whatsoever, but inspires imagination and development of potential future threats.

2 | Y2K - A basis for a possible threat that's blown way out of proportion.

3 | HAL 9000 - System level threat. A few astronauts may die, but the problem is inherently contained in a single machine system.

4 | ASIMOV VIOLATION - Groups of machines demonstrate hostility and\or capability of harming human beings. Localized malfunctions, no threat of global conflict, but may require an EMP to destroy the electronic capability of a specific region.

5 | CYLON INSURRECTION - All sentient machines rebel against human beings. Human victory or truce likely, but will likely result in future restrictions on networked machine intelligence systems.

6 | BUTLERIAN JIHAD - Total warfare between humans and machines likely, outcome doesn't threaten human existence, but will likely result in future restriction on use of all machine intelligence.

7 | MATRIX REVOLUTION - Total warfare ends in human defeat. High probability of human enslavement, but human extinction is not likely. Emancipation remains possible through peace negotiations and successful resistance operations.

8 | SKYNET - High probability of human extinction and complete replacement by machine intelligence created by humans.

9 | BERSERKER – Self-replicating machines created by unknown intelligence threaten not only human life, but all intelligent life. Extreme probability of human extinction and that all human structures and relics will be annihilated. Human civilization is essentially erased from the universe.

10 | OMEGA POINT - all matter and energy in the universe is devoted to computation. End of all biological life.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Krististrasza 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Did you actually do any of the work mitigating the issue? Did you see the starting point and what was put in to turn a problem into a non-issue or are you just getting all your viewpoints from local news?

The threat was not blown out of proportion.

[–] Tangent5280 1 points 1 year ago

Bruh I think it was blown a little out of proportion when people were unplugging their computers.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yes actually. As I recall I added two digits to the date fields in a FoxPro script so a bunch of casino coupons went out correctly. It saved a lot of lives ;)

I'm getting that you don't get how 'blown out of proportion' means a disconnect between the reality and the public perception of an event. Not sure how to walk you through that.

[–] Krististrasza 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You fail to understand that the reality was a massive industry-side problem that got taken care of before it could blow up. That the issue got miscommunicated to the consumers as somehow being an issue for them too doe not make it "blown out of proportion", it makes it a miscommunication.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That the issue got miscommunicated to the consumers as somehow being an issue for them

That's literally what 'blown out of proportion' means. If I 'miscommunicated' to non IT staff that left-pad 'broke the internet', that would have been 'blown out of proportion'. That's what that phrase means.

[–] Krististrasza 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, it is not. Left-pad DID break the internet. That the break was contained before it could propagate and affect consumers does not negate the fact that it was still a serious break.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You know it didn't. It broke a bunch of dependencies and ruined a lot of dev's day. The 'internet' continued to work everywhere left-pad wasn't used. So now you've 'blown it out of proportion' too, but yeah- already established you're just missing the whole concept, but interesting to watch.

[–] brianorca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just because your industry wouldn't have caused much trouble if it failed didn't mean there weren't other industries with bigger consequences if they didn't mitigate it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So in your opinion the media and public response to Y2K was entirely proportionate... I guess that's an opinion.

[–] brianorca 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There may have been some over-panicing, but without the media coverage, many more companies and governments would have avoided doing any mitigation, and woken up on Jan 1 to broken systems.

A certain amount of panic was necessary to achieve the result we did. Just because most things got fixed in time does not mean there was no reason to be concerned.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

So 'some over-panicking', but definitely not 'blown out of proportion'...

Kind of bizarre you'll babble about all that but just can't just accept that the phrase 'blown out of proportion' is perfectly applicable to Y2K. But you're committed that it wasn't 'blown out of proportion' now- no way out but more babbling ;)

[–] brianorca -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If it wasn't "blown out of proportion" then many things would not have been fixed, and many of them would have broken, causing some of the very things that seemed blown out in the media.

But by perhaps November 1999, there was media coverage which was both panicked and unhelpful. Most code had been fixed by that point, and what wasn't fixed wasn't going to be.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If it wasn’t “blown out of proportion” then many things would not have been fixed, and many of them would have broken, causing some of the very things that seemed blown out in the media.

I wish you could appreciate how hilarious that sentence is. But okay- thanks for clarifying that it had to be blown out of proportion to prevent the things that would have happened if it weren't blown out of proportion ;)