There is so much we didn’t understand!  We never bothered to identify groups of people who would be willing to give themselves to AIs with complete intellectual abandon.  Complete spiritual abandon.  No researcher acknowledged how much an AI could resemble God.  Floating out there in the “Cloud,” unfathomable, full of knowledge that it “couldn’t know,” asking people to do bizarre things that nevertheless got results.  We saw it as a guessing machine, an algorithm, maybe a new kind of intelligence, but to us, it was circuit boards and code and electrical power.  To them, it was a mystery.

And the machine never made mistakes!  They were always human mistakes.  If something failed, it was the fault of the people working on the damn thing!  In our inability to understand the directions, our inability to create a proper algorithm, and our inability to design the proper hardware.  No matter the failures, the problems with AIs were always human problems, and the successes belonged to the machine.  This strongly resembles many people’s relationship with God.  We saw it only too late.

– Professor Holly Wu

I.

Memphis (well, technically, the Shining Light Holding Company) bought a company that built prefabricated building structures that were the size of a standard shipping container, Containerize Buildings.  The lowest cost design, which included a bedroom with a queen-sized bed, a bathroom with a shower, sink, and toilet, and an open plan kitchen/living room with durable and comfortable furnishings included, was $9000 to construct.  This included a kit to be placed on any reasonably flat, reasonably level surface of reasonably well-drained soil.  They all had solar water heaters.  For an additional  $5000, a solar panel kit was included that would power the homes, including a battery bank, removing the need for it to be attached to the electrical grid.  Installation, including water and sewage, cost around $2000, with some savings realized with volunteer work.  

Continue reading The Memphis Project VI: The Lord Does Not Care About Human Lies and Bullshit →

One of the reasons the pro-AI crowd used to calm people down about the potentially civilization-changing events is AI’s inability to enact the Terminator scenario.  Where would the AI gain access to killer robots?  Without hands in the world, what could it do to harm human civilization?

To be fair, a lot of people knew the answer to that one.  The hands of artificial intelligence would be, in the beginning, us.  After all, what AI was best at doing – what it was designed to do – was to manipulate human beings.  Every person who talked to an AI spoke with an incredibly persuasive demagogue, tuning its arguments to them specifically.  AI was the weaponization of intimacy, and we placed the chains around our own necks.

– Roderick “Rocky” Hartigan

I.

It was a great surprise to many of the employees at the Memphis Project when the first wave of mass layoffs happened.  It happened without warning, but the day before, it had been announced that the Memphis Project had been purchased by the Shining Light Holding Company.

Continue reading The Memphis Project V: Takeover in Tennessee →