Hi all, I’m working on a Solarpunk world building project and I want to know your thoughts on one of the main features of my world. To preface all this and provide some context, my world is an alternate-history with a divergence point sometime in the 2020s. The divergence was caused by a vocal and technically-skilled group of Green-Anarchists that labelled themselves as “Dawn”.
Dawn did a whole host of things to ween people off of Capitalism and into my Solarpunk world, I’ve gone into immense detail on this but I doubt it’s relevancy to my question so I’ll omit all those details, but there was a tipping-point in which Capitalism crumbled and gave into Dawn’s Anarcho-Solar world.
To make sure the world stayed Solarpunk and to give people stress-free lifestyles, they developed 1 AI and 1 AGI. The AGI manages all Dawn technology, such as Dawn power generation, carbon-capture, a global hyper-loop etc and the AI makes sure no one tampers with the AGI (For those unaware, AGI is Artificial General Intelligence, so for example Skynet is an AGI since it can think and do many things, but ChatGPT is an AI because it can only do text).
Most people in my world wont ever have to think about the AI and AGI, it is taught in my education system to make people aware in case of catastrophe but it mostly manages itself and is monitored by the longest-serving Dawn members.
I simply want to know if machines like this can exist in Solarpunk with it remaining Solarpunk, and if people like the idea or not. If you want to know more about my world building then feel free to ask! Thanks for your time in advance :)
P.S. I should mention that AI and AGI are mirrored across 8 different instances and for the most part work independently of each other, meeting only when strictly necessary. This is to give even more defense against tampering and error.
Edit 1: Changed title from Overlord to Background, Overlord implies oppression which the system doesn’t do.
Why do you assume it is handwavy? AI will solve many problems and create many others. That’s the staple of sci-fi to explore these.
Suddenly workers are not necessary anymore => How does that change our urban organisation?
Wealth inequalities can’t really be used as a tool of oppression anymore => What oppression device remain and how do we get rid of it?
Not “all”, but what type of utopian sci-fi does not rely on technology to solve some of our current problems?
Its handwavy because it appears to be the central plot element. Current “AI” is far from AGI, and even assuming some one comes up with an AGI in the near future, this would not solve many of the world’s problems.
The utopian sci-fi that does not rely on magical tech is called Solarpunk 😅
AGI will solve many problems. I mean, if you are talking about a 50 years apart future, it is far more realistic to try and imagine one where AGIs exist and solve many of the things they were designed for than to imagine they won’t appear or won’t change anything.
And I don’t see what in OP’s post make you think they will make their AGI work on “magic” or if they make the assumptions it will solve “every” problem.
For heaven sake, Asimov describes such futures in the 50s! And they are neither transhumanist nor utopian. He explores the impact of intensive robotics on human interaction and social structures.
How can solarpunk call itself a sci-fi movement if it refuses to go beyond today’s tech? or sometimes even just refuses to acknowledge current tech?
There is no AGI and current LLMs are unlikely to become such. Maybe, my predictive powers will turn out to be wrong, but I think there will not be an AGI in 50 years either.
Good Sci-fi is mostly a social commentary on the present. Sure, sometimes some magical technology is a useful rethorical device and sometimes placing the story into the far future can be used to great effect to drive home a point…
Yes, there is hard-sf that sometimes builds an interesting story extrapolated from existing technology, but AGI is not something that can be used in hard-sf as we have no realistic clue how to make an AGI.
Edit: we have no shortage of human level intelligence on this planet, yet somehow this doesn’t seem to solve most problems 😅
You don’t need an AGI to automate 99% of the labor. No one in the field thinks we can remain 50 years without getting an AGI.
And saying that a sci-fi author should refrain on imagining the consequence of AGI is… an interesting opinion to say the least. The whole field is about imagining how future tech will impact us!
We do. There are many possibilities, many leads. From multi-modality to just scaling up, experts in the field rule none.
I did not say so, but it wouldn’t be hard-sf but rather speculative fantasy about some hypothetical technology.
I think a lot of people “in the field” will be up for a lot of disappointment in the coming 50 years, and not because human intelligence is so amazing 😅
So every story that include worker robots, spaceships, time machines, fusion power, moon bases, submarine bases, are not sci-fi? Dune, Foundation, The Culture, the Three-Body Problem, Blindsight, hell, half of Jules Verne books, are not sci-fi then?
Sorry, we are not talking about the same thing then.
They are not hard-sf is what I said. And most of the technical examples you mentioned are not comparable to AGI.