The rapid advance of AI/Robotics and Star Trek

[Tarek71]

The astonishing and rapid rise of AI is transforming many professions. It now appears likely that something like Data might exist in our lifetimes, not the 24th Century. AI and robots will likely be ubiquitous in society in a manner more like the Star Wars Universe than in Trek. Should Trek be retconned to this emerging tech, or are we saying that something happens to derail it.

With Transhumanism, involving another set of potentially revolutionary technologies, it was banned. Superhumans like Khan were created, but they tried to seize power and the bloody war that followed ultimately led to the apparent banning of most Transhumanist research ideas. Is something like that at work with AI, in order to preserve a recognizable Trek, or should it change with the times?

 

[BillJ]

Is something like that at work with AI, in order to preserve a recognizable Trek, or should it change with the times?

Trek looks absolutely archaic where real world technological progress is concerned.

 

[Ragitsu]

It's not "AI".

 

[FredH]

It's not "AI".

Eh, sure it is, it’s just not artificial consciousness. If it outputs what to us is the functional equivalent of the result of thought , then it doesn’t matter so much that it’s really just the result of the proximity of numbers in a vector space.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Sometimes sci-fi doesn't take into account pullbacks from social and political shifts that can greatly slow down technological progress (2001: A Space Odyssey is a great example of this, IMO). Maybe in Trek, there was a cultural pullback against advanced robotics and AI as we know it after the 21st-Century or that it was consolidated into general automated systems technology and cybernetics. If the latter, the term "artificial intelligence" might be just an archaic term that isn't used much by everyday people anymore.

 

[Ragitsu]

Eh, sure it is, it’s just not artificial consciousness. If it outputs what to us is the functional equivalent of the result of thought , then it doesn’t matter so much that it’s really just the result of the proximity of numbers in a vector space.

It was a buzzword (buzzacronym?) that caught on: nothing more, nothing less.

 

[YouAreDooomed]

The astonishing and rapid rise of AI is transforming many professions. It now appears likely that something like Data might exist in our lifetimes, not the 24th Century. AI and robots will likely be ubiquitous in society in a manner more like the Star Wars Universe than in Trek. Should Trek be retconned to this emerging tech, or are we saying that something happens to derail it.

With Transhumanism, involving another set of potentially revolutionary technologies, it was banned. Superhumans like Khan were created, but they tried to seize power and the bloody war that followed ultimately led to the apparent banning of most Transhumanist research ideas. Is something like that at work with AI, in order to preserve a recognizable Trek, or should it change with the times?

It was "changed" already. The Tellarites have (pseudo-) AI robots by the mid 22nd century, Mudd uses android replicas of himself...

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Miner_Transport_Emergency_Assistant

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Harcourt_Fenton_Mudd_(android)

Even TOS has cargo drones. The common use of drones/ robots is implied in the Berman shows as well, but hardly ever shown due to production limitations. Fed tech is shown to be capable of (casually) creating 100 % true AIs here. Holo Moriarty is created with a simple damn computer command; Wesley's nanites and exocomps are fucking accidents, and MHNs hardly even recognized. Data is special because positronic brains are all the rage.

Genetic augmentations are banned, not transhumanism as a whole, see cybernetics (Jankom, Rutherford, Geordie, Bynars...).

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Was the OP written by AI?

There is an gross overestimation of what LLMs can do. They underperform, are inefficient, and costly in terms of resources, energy, and capital to run. "AI" will end up being an expensive tool used by specialists once investors realize how much money they have thrown away after believing they would make work obsolete.

 

[BillJ]

Fed tech is shown to be capable of (casually) creating 100 % true AIs here.

Though they largely fail when trying to create it. M-5 says hi.

 

[Shawnster]

Right now AI is still just fancy pattern recognition that still can't get the number of fingers correct.

Even at that, though, it's causing people to doubt the veracity of what is legitimate and blindly accept what is fake.

 

[YouAreDooomed]

Though they largely fail when trying to create it. M-5 says hi.

M-5 is a functioning AI and so are Lore and Badgey; they all just decide to become assholes.

 

[Ragitsu]

Right now AI is still just fancy pattern recognition that still can't get the number of fingers correct.

Even at that, though, it's causing people to doubt the veracity of what is legitimate and blindly accept what is fake.

It is also - in an ever-increasing number of scenarios - being forced without consent; that is a big no-no.

 

[Shawnster]

M-5 is a functioning AI and so are Lore and Badgey; they all just decide to become assholes.

I have a problem placing Badgey in this category, and it's the same problem I have with the Doctor and any supposed sentient hologram. My problem is these all are just software. They are apps that run on a computer.

Before the mobile emitter, the Doctor was just a software program on Voyager. Take Voyager's computer apart or infect it with a virus, and the Doctor is also affected. The same holds for Moriarty or the idea that Barclay argued with Einstein in "The Nth Degree". It's not Moriarty. That wasn't Einstein. That was the ship's computer.

I'll accept Zora in this case. Zora was the embodiment of the ship's computer. M-5 was a separate entity that could access the computer. Data, Lore, and all the Soong type and descendant androids are their own independent entities.

Badgey is a glorified ChatGPT.

 

[Species517]

With AI, voice recognition, and home assistants like Alexa, we’re basically at the point of the computer of the USS Enterprise being real.

 

[knightgrace]

First of all, for there to be Artificial Intelligence, there has to be Intelligence.

Which raises the question are humans actually intelligent?

Because the way things are going?...
Artificial Intelligence may be the deciding factor in whether or not we are intelligent.

The real problem with 'Star Trek', is that for some things it uses different terminology...

In other words, what is 'Independent Logic', is A. I. Or something else?

Why were the ship's computers, clearly inadequate for running the ship? Little more than single function analog computers?

Failure of the imagination as Arthur C. Clarke put it, in his book 'Profiles of the Future' copyright 1963, 1983.

Which brings us around to, conceptual framework depicted in 'The Orville' - slavery. This may be what they were trying to avoid back in the 1960s.

 

[USS Kongo NCC-1710]

With AI, voice recognition, and home assistants like Alexa, we’re basically at the point of the computer of the USS Enterprise being real.

Does this include the ability of a ship’s computer to autonomously cook up a theory of how to safely beam people into an alternate universe (TOS: “Mirror, Mirror”)?

 

[Richard S. Ta]

First of all, for there to be Artificial Intelligence, there has to be Intelligence.

Which raises the question are humans actually intelligent?

Because the way things are going?...
Artificial Intelligence may be the deciding factor in whether or not we are intelligent.

The real problem with 'Star Trek', is that for some things it uses different terminology...

In other words, what is 'Independent Logic', is A. I. Or something else?

Why were the ship's computers, clearly inadequate for running the ship? Little more than single function analog computers?

Failure of the imagination as Arthur C. Clarke put it, in his book 'Profiles of the Future' copyright 1963, 1983.

Which brings us around to, conceptual framework depicted in 'The Orville' - slavery. This may be what they were trying to avoid back in the 1960s.

I'm still 99% certain that your account is the product of generative AI.

It would explain a great deal.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Which raises the question are humans actually intelligent?

Cogito ergo sum.

Intelligence is defined by human qualities and experiences.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

I have a problem placing Badgey in this category, and it's the same problem I have with the Doctor and any supposed sentient hologram. My problem is these all are just software. They are apps that run on a computer.

Badgey is a glorified ChatGPT.

Badgey is the BEST ChatGPT. He's my Google avatar

 

[knightgrace]

I'm still 99% certain that your account is the product of generative AI.

It would explain a great deal.

Well then, you lose.
Nor, am I an HAL 10000, nor an HAL 11000.

I am 100% organic.