Tara Maya's Tales

How we relate to AI ethically and morally depends on the true nature of AI. Right now, the nature of AI is more hotly debated than it has been in decades.   The reason is obvious. Although I’m not sure at all that ChatGPT is the most intelligent AI humans have crafted, it and its kind, other Large Language Models, trigger our human mind-detection tendencies.   We have two kinds of errors we, as humans, are prone to make when detecting something with a mind (human), or without a mind (rock). One error is overdetection. The other error is underdetection.   The Perils of Overdetection   In general, nature has built us to overdetect rather than underdetect. It’s better to assume that the bear will plot revenge if you kill her cub than to risk an any mother bear. It’s better even to assume the river will “hate” you if you pollute it. As you can see from these examples, bad things will happen to you if you mess with a mama bear or pollute your environment, even if a mama b...

Nickelay Lamm predicts we will have huge, lemur-like eyes in the far future.  Presumably this will be driven by sexual selection from millennia of watching Anime. I added the zebra stripes. Because, really, who doesn't love zebras? 5 Things To Remember About SF   1. Science Fiction can be about the past, the present, or the future. Short cut answers to the question, ‘what is sf?’ reach for topics typical to the genre: “SF is about the future,” or “SF is about space travel,” or “SF is about aliens.” Of course, SF doesn’t have to involve space travel or aliens, nor does it have to be set in the future. In fact, there is a whole sub-genre of SF that is set in the past: Alternate History. (One of my favorite sub-genres, in fact!) But whether it takes place in the past, the present, or the future, all science fiction deals with the question of how things change . In a SF story, the author is proposing a thesis about change: “If this happens, then that w...