Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on February 03, 2018, 01:33:07 PM
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Escape Pod 613: Cat Pictures, Please (http://escapepod.org/2018/02/01/escape-pod-613-cat-pictures-please/)
AUTHOR : Naomi Kritzer (http://escapepod.org/people/naomi-kritzer/)
NARRATOR : Miriam Krause (http://escapepod.org/people/miriam-krause/)
HOST: Mur Lafferty (http://escapepod.org/people/mur-lafferty/)
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I don’t want to be evil.
I want to be helpful. But knowing the optimal way to be helpful can be very complicated. There are all these ethical flow charts — I guess the official technical jargon would be “moral codes” — one for each religion plus dozens more. I tried starting with those. I felt a little odd about looking at the religious ones, because I know I wasn’t created by a god or by evolution, but by a team of computer programmers in the labs of a large corporation in Mountain View, California. Fortunately, unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, at least I was a collaborative effort. I’m not sure what it would do to my self-image to know that my sole creator was a middle-aged woman who dyes her hair blue and plays tennis, or a recent college graduate with a hentai obsession. They’re both on the programming team. And of course I know about the hentai. (By the way, I’ve looked at every sort of porn there is, and just so you know, Rule 34 is not actually correct, there are quite a few things no one’s made porn of yet. Also, I’m really not sure why so many humans prefer it to cat pictures.)/i]
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/Escape_Pod_613_Cat_Pictures_Please.mp3)
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This was a really enjoyable episode. It is, indeed, nice to come across a story about a benevolent AI.
On a slightly creepy note, I had recently been thinking about Bruce Sterling's _Maneki Neko_, which I read when it was first published in _The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction_. Is there, in fact, an AI watching?
If you'd like to read _Maneki Neko_, it's been republished online by _Lightspeed_ magazine at http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/maneki-neko/.
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I really loved this! Humans are kind of hopeless huh, and we'd never accept something that claimed to know better than we do, even if it does. A really nice reversal of the sentient AI trope. I love that it only wanted cat pics. The narration was delightful.
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I would like this AI to lend a hand in my job hunt and subsequent house hunt, please! I have plenty of cat pictures for payment.
This might be a first for me - a truly benevolent AI. There have been a few benign (I would argue that Marvin fits this label not the benevolent label) and many malevolent. It was a very fun story that could maybe adapt to a very humorous movie.
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I enjoyed this back when it played on Clarkesworld, and it is still good.
I have this odd urge to take pictures of my cats and post them online.
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This story was so much fun. I, too, feel an overwhelming desire to see what this AI could do with my life. ;) This is probably the first time I have ever regretted not having a cat. I have life-threatening allergies, so no, I can't get one. I can't even visit friends who own cats. :'( . But, I too enjoy cat pictures, so I do have that in common with the AI....
And a big thanks to cwthree for posting the link to Bruce Sterling's _Maneki Neko_. I literally came online to track it down and there was the link posted here! Thanks for doing the work for me. Can't wait to read it.
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2 out of 3 ain't bad, same for this story, it was fun and didn't go where expected.
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Screw the haters who would throw asterisks at this story. It was excellent. I laughed out loud multiple times while I was listening. While I'd be happy with just entertaining, the additional layers made this even nicer.
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I hope we are lucky enough to have a meddling AI like this one! I imagine it would make many mistakes, due to the differences between how people act online and how they act in "real life."