When Extrapolation Goes Wrong

[Kelliezgirl]

Dune (1965) predicted the rise of AI (of sorts), hence the ban on "thinking machines". That's a bit of an oversimplification of course but the point stands.

I rather wonder if we won't look back on this whole AI thing the same way as the Y2K panic. I remember telling my Mom, "You freaked out about what?". Will my kids someday ask me about the Great AI Panic of the 2020s?

 

[alohadave]

Dune (1965) predicted the rise of AI (of sorts), hence the ban on "thinking machines". That's a bit of an oversimplification of course but the point stands.

I rather wonder if we won't look back on this whole AI thing the same way as the Y2K panic. I remember telling my Mom, "You freaked out about what?". Will my kids someday ask me about the Great AI Panic of the 2020s?

The prequel books are widely panned, but they go into detail about the events that led to the Butlerian Jihad and the prohibitions against thinking machines.

The short of it is that cybermeks (brains in a jar inside big robots) had taken over human planets. In a moment of stupidity, one of them gave control to an AI that enslaved everyone until the humans pushed the AI out.

Personally, current AI is not a worry as far as taking over. It'll cost people jobs, but that's been coming down the pile for years. It's hitting all at once and people are freaking because they realize now that they may not have a job in a few years.

But we are a long way from a human level AI.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Sadly, we'll all be living an AI life by then.

Dune (1965) predicted the rise of AI (of sorts), hence the ban on "thinking machines". That's a bit of an oversimplification of course but the point stands.

I rather wonder if we won't look back on this whole AI thing the same way as the Y2K panic. I remember telling my Mom, "You freaked out about what?". Will my kids someday ask me about the Great AI Panic of the 2020s?

 

[SimonDoom]

Dune (1965) predicted the rise of AI (of sorts), hence the ban on "thinking machines". That's a bit of an oversimplification of course but the point stands.

I rather wonder if we won't look back on this whole AI thing the same way as the Y2K panic. I remember telling my Mom, "You freaked out about what?". Will my kids someday ask me about the Great AI Panic of the 2020s?

I can remember the great "Y2K" scare that preceded the turn of the millennium. Some feared that planes would fall from the sky. Lawyers built up specialties in the expectation of massive damages and liability and lawsuits.

The late 60s and early 70s were full of predictions that by the end of the century we'd be running out of everything and there would be massive global starvation.

Catastrophism goes back a long way and there's a seemingly endless appetite for it.

 

[Zootonius]

Sadly, we'll all be living an AI life by then.

You may know it. There was a ST episode where Nurse Chapel finds her long lost husband, only to discover he's now an android.

(I don't know why she's complaining, the droid could likely stay hard all night)

 

[Bramblethorn]

Personally, current AI is not a worry as far as taking over. It'll cost people jobs, but that's been coming down the pile for years. It's hitting all at once and people are freaking because they realize now that they may not have a job in a few years.

But we are a long way from a human level AI.

Yep. AFAICT the risks associated with current "AI" technologies are the usual job-disruption ones created by any new tech, plus "information on the Web gets less reliable, betcha didn't even realise that was possible", plus "grandpa just gave his bank account login details to that nice robot on the phone". Harder to make an exciting movie out of that though.

I suspect at least some of the current techbros talking about the menace of smart AIs are doing it less because they believe in it, more as a way to distract from the real problems and limitations of the "AI" products they're trying to sell us right now.

 

[lc69hunter]

I envision that within fifty to seventy five years (sadly I will not be around to see it) we will be mining the asteroids from bases on Mars with small teams and shuttles with navigation systems built in. The ultimate in blue collar work.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I can remember the great "Y2K" scare that preceded the turn of the millennium. Some feared that planes would fall from the sky. Lawyers built up specialties in the expectation of massive damages and liability and lawsuits.

A guy's about to head out for work. His wife says "honey, it's going to rain today, take an umbrella." He grumbles, but takes the umbrella.

When he comes home that night, the umbrella's wet but his clothes are dry. As he's shaking out the umbrella he says smugly to his wife, "See, I didn't even get the slightest bit damp. Why on earth did you think I needed an umbrella?"

 

[EmilyMiller]

've been re-reading a lot of old science fiction lately. Stuff from the 1950s. One thing everybody got wrong including Heinlein was the idea of blue collar astronauts. In so many stories the guys building the lunar stations the satellites and ferrying the supplies are smart guys who do it more for the glory than the bucks. They receive modest to low pay and work in obscurity while they sacrifice their bodies and souls to the vagaries of space. Old, infirm spacemen, contemplating the end and bemoaning the modern breed of astronaut and insisting that their long.-suffering wives put on their magnoboots after they have had last rights so that they can enter the next wold like a real man. Which, of course, is exactly what happened! Well not really, not even close, aside from the obscurity part. Astronauts and cosmonauts are well paid white collar types who from time to time do blue collar work in space.
The generation that fought WWII transferred the everyday grunts of wartime, the seabees and sappers, to outer space. The only exception I can think of is Arthur C. Clarke whose spacemen and astronauts ware also scientists, not low-wage drudges. There is a lesson fo all of us authors, just because a pattern is established, that does not mean that it will inevitably repeat. Not all gold rushes are the same even if they are all after the same thing. The tulip bubble and the fall of FTX crypto are two very different economic lessons that nonetheless have tons of overlap.
Our imaginations often betray our writing by limiting us. When extrapolating, use a couple of sources of inspiration to hopefully end up with a more rounded story that will stand the test of time.
Aside from blue collar spacemen. What other tropes from the past have failed to materialize? Let's hear them.

I had a voice-activated ship’s computer called Alexa in Coleoidphilia.

All the Siris had been terminated in The Phone Wars.

Em

 

[Kelliezgirl]

The prequel books are widely panned, but they go into detail about the events that led to the Butlerian Jihad and the prohibitions against thinking machines.

The short of it is that cybermeks (brains in a jar inside big robots) had taken over human planets. In a moment of stupidity, one of them gave control to an AI that enslaved everyone until the humans pushed the AI out.

Personally, current AI is not a worry as far as taking over. It'll cost people jobs, but that's been coming down the pile for years. It's hitting all at once and people are freaking because they realize now that they may not have a job in a few years.

But we are a long way from a human level AI.

Machines taking jobs has been a fact of life for decades now.
Self driving vehicles will replace truckers!
CHEERS!
AI will replace office jobs!
OHHH NOOOO!

Adapt or die.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

View attachment 2292661

“O rose of May
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet apparatus, wherefore art thou?”

2005 is gone. Dunno how you missed the Rosie units.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Some scifi doesn't seem so outrageous and is a bit more conservative with the future. Personally some of them look like directions we're headed and I think these people trying to create progress, should take these takes in consideration and maybe not do what they're trying to do. Hopefully I'll be long dead before some of this tech and "advancements" take full hold.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I can remember the great "Y2K" scare that preceded the turn of the millennium. Some feared that planes would fall from the sky. Lawyers built up specialties in the expectation of massive damages and liability and lawsuits.

I was directly involved in that, in the context of defence software systems.

Here in Australia, every aircraft was grounded as the clock ticked over midnight, just in case - commercial, military. The analysis said, we're pretty sure we're okay, but nobody would sign off on, "it's 100% safe," so "on the ground" was safer.

In the event, banks were hit hardest, in terms of their databases, and any system that ran on people's birth dates. Did 01 mean 1901 or 2001? Who knew?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Machines taking jobs has been a fact of life for decades now.
Self driving vehicles will replace truckers!
CHEERS!
AI will replace office jobs!
OHHH NOOOO!

Adapt or die.

Pop down to any big open cut mine. Autonomous trucks have been used for a couple of decades, ditto trains.

 

[Paul_Chance]

When it comes to SciFi, to me, it's important to remember that authors are constructing one possible vision of the future with the intention of using it as a story-telling environment. There are books that try to create a realistic "near-future" and come pretty close to forecasting ten or twenty years ahead in a narrow band. Some of William Gibson's work stands up. Other parts of his catalogue badly missed.

 

[EmilyMiller]

When it comes to SciFi, to me, it's important to remember that authors are constructing one possible vision of the future with the intention of using it as a story-telling environment. There are books that try to create a realistic "near-future" and come pretty close to forecasting ten or twenty years ahead in a narrow band. Some of William Gibson's work stands up. Other parts of his catalogue badly missed.

My vision was that anal douching had been automated by 2223.

True story.

Em

 

[gunhilltrain]

I agree with Stillstunned--we're way behind "schedule" on flying cars and space travel. Look at Blade Runner, set in 2019. It's 2023 and Los Angeles doesn't look anything like that. That, too, explains the "white collar" presence in space. Very few people so far have made it into space. There's nothing for blue collar people to do there yet.

What Sci Fi novels underestimated is the Internet, and communication, and how much it's changed everything.

Sci Fi novels also, in my opinion, greatly exaggerate the likelihood of the future being a bleak dystopia, like the world in Blade Runner. What these visions of the future don't take into account is that nobody wants to live like that

Considering how people drive and maintain their vehicles, the idea of "flying cars" seems a bit perilous. Maybe they should stay on the ground and cause enough mayhem there.

If you look at Blade Runner carefully, there are both land-based and aerial vehicles. Do the proles stay on the streets? In one scene, there is a brief view of what looks like a late 1950's Chrysler. Well, there still are old cars out there, which people usually take out on summer weekends. There was one guy I'd saw in New Jersey who went around in a Model T (I think) when he felt like it.

 

[Lifestyle66]

've been re-reading a lot of old science fiction lately. Stuff from the 1950s. One thing everybody got wrong including Heinlein was the idea of blue collar astronauts. In so many stories the guys building the lunar stations the satellites and ferrying the supplies are smart guys who do it more for the glory than the bucks. They receive modest to low pay and work in obscurity while they sacrifice their bodies and souls to the vagaries of space. Old, infirm spacemen, contemplating the end and bemoaning the modern breed of astronaut and insisting that their long.-suffering wives put on their magnoboots after they have had last rights so that they can enter the next wold like a real man. Which, of course, is exactly what happened! Well not really, not even close, aside from the obscurity part. Astronauts and cosmonauts are well paid white collar types who from time to time do blue collar work in space.
The generation that fought WWII transferred the everyday grunts of wartime, the seabees and sappers, to outer space. The only exception I can think of is Arthur C. Clarke whose spacemen and astronauts ware also scientists, not low-wage drudges. There is a lesson fo all of us authors, just because a pattern is established, that does not mean that it will inevitably repeat. Not all gold rushes are the same even if they are all after the same thing. The tulip bubble and the fall of FTX crypto are two very different economic lessons that nonetheless have tons of overlap.
Our imaginations often betray our writing by limiting us. When extrapolating, use a couple of sources of inspiration to hopefully end up with a more rounded story that will stand the test of time.
Aside from blue collar spacemen. What other tropes from the past have failed to materialize? Let's hear them.

It's about the economics, and that is timeless.

Regardless of what some people want to believe, people are only worth the relative value of what they are doing for others. And your "white collar" spacemen today are more like airline pilots of the 1960's, more than a few but relatively well paid. Today's spacemen aren't even as rare as those first seven "Right Stuff" picked for the U.S. space program in the 1950's.

As the technology evolves and becomes more commonplace, the drudge work falls to the more expendible humans ... just like muskets were originally only entrusted to the king's guards, then became the tools of the infantrymen.

So, in space, we're not there ... yet.

 

[stonedinstilletos]

've been re-reading a lot of old science fiction lately. Stuff from the 1950s. One thing everybody got wrong including Heinlein was the idea of blue collar astronauts. In so many stories the guys building the lunar stations the satellites and ferrying the supplies are smart guys who do it more for the glory than the bucks. They receive modest to low pay and work in obscurity while they sacrifice their bodies and souls to the vagaries of space. Old, infirm spacemen, contemplating the end and bemoaning the modern breed of astronaut and insisting that their long.-suffering wives put on their magnoboots after they have had last rights so that they can enter the next wold like a real man. Which, of course, is exactly what happened! Well not really, not even close, aside from the obscurity part. Astronauts and cosmonauts are well paid white collar types who from time to time do blue collar work in space.
The generation that fought WWII transferred the everyday grunts of wartime, the seabees and sappers, to outer space. The only exception I can think of is Arthur C. Clarke whose spacemen and astronauts ware also scientists, not low-wage drudges. There is a lesson fo all of us authors, just because a pattern is established, that does not mean that it will inevitably repeat. Not all gold rushes are the same even if they are all after the same thing. The tulip bubble and the fall of FTX crypto are two very different economic lessons that nonetheless have tons of overlap.
Our imaginations often betray our writing by limiting us. When extrapolating, use a couple of sources of inspiration to hopefully end up with a more rounded story that will stand the test of time.
Aside from blue collar spacemen. What other tropes from the past have failed to materialize? Let's hear them.

I have to disagree with this. I think we’re not at the blue collar astronaut stage yet. The reason way, in part, is because of the governments retaining a monopoly over Spaceflight up until SpaceX. Until then the government kept is a specialist job that only a few were allowed to participate in becasue, in part, bureaucracies (like monachies) like to have status symbols and spoils that they can dole out. When you get the government out of the business of being monopoly, then you will see blue collar astronauts. Why becasue capitalists don’t want to pay for a guy with 2 Masters degrees to change a panel on a space station. They will figure a cheaper way to get someone who costs less out there to do it.

<stepping off my soapbox>

Flying cars are the things I think science fiction writers got wrong. A few years ago, I would have said AI, but that nightmare is here or almost (sorry, I’m not convinced that they will be benevolent, or controllable once we really have them running).

The thing I think, personally, that they got right was the Dick Tracy watch. Even though its still tethered to a phone to an extent, the iwatch and the rest are what they ianmgined back then.

 

[JGittes]

I envision that within fifty to seventy five years (sadly I will not be around to see it) we will be mining the asteroids from bases on Mars with small teams and shuttles with navigation systems built in. The ultimate in blue collar work.

It has been over 50 years since humans last walked on the moon, and we haven't returned. We won't have bases on Mars doing what you suggest, probably ever.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Machines taking jobs has been a fact of life for decades now.
Self driving vehicles will replace truckers!
CHEERS!
AI will replace office jobs!
OHHH NOOOO!

Adapt or die.

Self driving semis won't be doing that anytime soon. They may get down the highways and expressways well enough, but load sites need a human touch.

 

[JGittes]

I agree with Stillstunned--we're way behind "schedule" on flying cars and space travel. Look at Blade Runner, set in 2019. It's 2023 and Los Angeles doesn't look anything like that. That, too, explains the "white collar" presence in space. Very few people so far have made it into space. There's nothing for blue collar people to do there yet.

What Sci Fi novels underestimated is the Internet, and communication, and how much it's changed everything.

Sci Fi novels also, in my opinion, greatly exaggerate the likelihood of the future being a bleak dystopia, like the world in Blade Runner. What these visions of the future don't take into account is that nobody wants to live like that

You must not have been to Luanda, Mumbai, or Legos.

 

[StillStunned]

I wrote a sci-fi fragment about a possible advancement: https://forum.literotica.com/threads/why-i-love-writing-sci-fi-and-fantasy.1595671/

Fragment is about halfway down the second page.

 

[PennameWombat]

I can remember the great "Y2K" scare that preceded the turn of the millennium. Some feared that planes would fall from the sky. Lawyers built up specialties in the expectation of massive damages and liability and lawsuits.

The late 60s and early 70s were full of predictions that by the end of the century we'd be running out of everything and there would be massive global starvation.

Catastrophism goes back a long way and there's a seemingly endless appetite for it.

Dec. 31, 1999, 11:59 pm. I was absolutely sober because I, and a few others, were at work, Waiting for the Bad Shit to Happen. I was then residing and working in US EST, so much of the world had already made it past the Big Moment, and well, planes weren't falling from the sky and the nukes weren't melting down.

They finally let us all leave at 3:00 am EST on 1 Jan 2000 our time, once midnight PST had hit. Screw Hawaii.

But, as we'd actually spent the previous few years doing lots of work to specifically deal with the situation, it wasn't a surprise to us. Many systems had already seen issues in previous years, and been fixed, after all, think of things like credit cards that have future expiration dates and such. But, an "abundance of caution."

Interestingly, not quite three weeks prior to that, I'd been in Seattle when this happened:
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/millennium-plot-ahmed-ressam

It was a fun month.

And, let's be honest, Malthus kicked off the "we're all gonna starve!" craze at the end of the 18th century. Although, not even he originated Catastrophism. The original Christians expected that the Second Coming was imminent and would be in their life times. Not to mention every subsequent "the world is ending / the rapture is nigh" prediction that's come and passed without happening has never truly dampened the Belief of the Faithful

 

[JGittes]

I have to disagree with this. I think we’re not at the blue collar astronaut stage yet. The reason way, in part, is because of the governments retaining a monopoly over Spaceflight up until SpaceX. Until then the government kept is a specialist job that only a few were allowed to participate in becasue, in part, bureaucracies (like monachies) like to have status symbols and spoils that they can dole out. When you get the government out of the business of being monopoly, then you will see blue collar astronauts. Why becasue capitalists don’t want to pay for a guy with 2 Masters degrees to change a panel on a space station. They will figure a cheaper way to get someone who costs less out there to do it.

<stepping off my soapbox>

Flying cars are the things I think science fiction writers got wrong. A few years ago, I would have said AI, but that nightmare is here or almost (sorry, I’m not convinced that they will be benevolent, or controllable once we really have them running).

The thing I think, personally, that they got right was the Dick Tracy watch. Even though its still tethered to a phone to an extent, the iwatch and the rest are what they ianmgined back then.

The reason for government involvement in space flight is that it is ungodly expensive, and only governments have access to the financial resources to fund it. It's the same issue that railroads had in the 19th century.

There is a significant difference between railroads and space travel, which will continually limit access to space. It's ungodly expensive. For practical purposes, it's infinitely expensive to lift mass into space. Yes, SpaceX has lowered that cost by taking risks that the government cannot take, but half of infinitely expensive is still infinitely expensive.