Asimov Books and Criticism on Dystopia \ stacker news ~BooksAndArticles

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854 sats \ 8 comments \ @turker 27 Mar BooksAndArticles

In the past few weeks I decided to start a series that I had put off reading for a long time, Asimov's "Robot" series. I was prejudiced against the series, the ideas it carries and the universe of books because it was praised too much, quoted too much, referred to too much. I waited and waited patiently until the thoughts were fallow enough in my mind. As soon as I started the series, it took me a very short time to finish the first three books and I started the fourth book. In this article, I would like to share with you some of my opinions about the series and get your opinion, avoiding spoilers as much as possible.

For those who don't know, the series takes place in the future when humans are at the end of their lives on Earth and colonized in space. In the meantime, we witness a book universe that is utopian in terms of space colonies and dystopian in terms of Earth civilization.

Although the book seems to be about our future, I think it deals with a completely different structure than the potential future we are moving towards. For example, in the series, people carry out tasks that require thought power themselves, while robots carry out tasks that require physical strength. When we were thinking about whether robots would take our jobs from us in the past, I think we were imagining a universe exactly like the Asimov books, but now we seem to be moving towards a world structure where we are losing things that require creativity to artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence that can learn the paintings made by painters can imitate them with a few command sequences. Fashion show images and product photos prepared with artificial intelligence can be produced without any Photoshop knowledge. Artificial intelligence can write books for you according to certain criteria. Likewise, a person who is not very advanced in coding can dictate various code sections to artificial intelligence during programming. However, we are still doing the tea making. Of course, robots will exist in an Asimovian future order, but in the Asimov universe, robots specialized in terms of physical strength were emerging earlier rather than robots that developed in terms of thought power. In the books, we lost our physical jobs earlier than our mental jobs. Now I feel like we're going to lose our mental jobs earlier than our physical jobs.

I don't know what the future holds. The fact is that the idea of an Asimov-type dystopia is more appealing to me than the dystopia in which the Earth we live in is moving forward. I think the possibility of artificial intelligence taking over humanity may be a much more real risk factor in our real life. The biggest similarity I see between the book and reality is that people are so busy seeing the bad in each other that they are blind to the bad situations that AI/robots can create. Peace be with you.

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110 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 27 Mar

I really enjoyed that series. If you're specifically thinking about humanoid robots, then you might be right. However, robotics have already dramatically taken over tasks that used to be physically demanding. I'm not sure how that compares, though, to the amount of work AI is about to take over from creative tasks.

31 sats \ 2 replies \ @turker OP 27 Mar

Of course, even if we include non-humanoids, AI has made much greater progress in a much more limited time. I'm sure if we take into account the speed of development between robotics and AI, we can think that AI development is at a much different level.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 27 Mar

That's true, but I don't know how much we can infer from early rate of adoption. Robotics are capital intensive and have a much larger marginal cost, than an information technology, so it's not surprising there's a big difference in adoption rates.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @turker OP 27 Mar

Absolutely! That's exactly what's wrong with Asimov's universe. AI is developing much faster because it reaches more users at less cost and generates much larger revenues. While robots are specific to the people who will use them in the field they are built for, AI can be accessible from all over the world through a domain, a hosting and a data center. A great perspective!

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 27 Mar

Asimov was one of my favorites as a kid, though I read it without getting as much hype (still some, but this was pre-internet and I was a kid). And yeah, his vision is now so clearly an alternate timeline, it's hard to imagine anymore.

If you haven't read I, Robot (the short story collection that forms the foundation -- sorry -- of his robotics concepts that in turn are the core of the Robot series), I do recommend it, even if it's dated.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @turker OP 27 Mar

I know I, Robot and it is definitely in my reading list. I'm looking for a good translation. If I can't, I'll read it in English. Thanks for the advice!

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter 27 Mar

I don't know what the future holds. The fact is that the idea of an Asimov-type dystopia is more appealing to me than the dystopia in which the Earth we live in is moving forward.

Exactly! The Earth and it's inhabitants can mingle with AI or Robots in the Asinov's way but what we're witnessing or about to witness will be a Bring a total collapse to the humanity. We will become mere things and I won't be surprised if machine learning starts ruling over the emotional human species.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @turker OP 27 Mar

Just like in Matrix. Maybe we are already living in the tubes and the thing we know as "reality" is not real. The idea of AI is perfect but if something is too "perfect", it probably not.