alt Hacker NewsI recently read Kurt Vonnegut “Player Piano”, a novel that addresses automation taking over the economy. It’s not explicitly AI but addresses the same issues. Published in 1952, it was Vonneguts first novel and a real product of the post war era.[1]
Another interesting read that addresses these themes is “Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future” by Marshal Brain [2]
[1] https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/player...
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+1 to Player Piano, amazing book that could hardly meet the moment better.
It’s a good book but I didn’t agree that the big problem would be men lacking meaning because they didn’t have to work. They had families, homes and food. They could have devoted themselves to personal improvement, art, sports, their kids, whatever. I’d love to have security and no job. I’d be full to the brim with meaning and satisfaction.
Great reading list! They’re honestly two stories that I reflect on constantly while thinking about AI lately.
Player Piano, not to spoil anything, is about a world run by engineers and machines. The machines are “optimal” and make every decision. How do people find purpose, and how should the engineers that build the machines view their role in society?
Manna is the story of two societies with competing visions of how AI (which ironically starts out strikingly similar to an LLM) interacts with welfare/universal basic income and post-scarcity society. For good measure, it also hypothesizes the end state of the internet panopticon and personalized “scores” and rates.