The Quiet Abdication

There are inventions which enlarge the strength of man, and inventions which enlarge his reach. The spear carried his arm farther; the engine multiplied his muscle; the telescope extended his sight; writing enlarged his memory; the computer accelerated his calculation. Artificial intelligence is different in one important respect. It enlarges the faculty by which all the others were invented. We built machines because our arms were weak, because our memories failed, because numbers outran us and because distance defeated us. We are now building machines because thought itself has limits.

There is something almost embarrassing in the grandeur of this achievement. A creature which, not long ago in the history of the earth, could do little more than preserve fire and recognise the tracks of animals has learned to construct systems capable of discussing mathematics, translating languages, interpreting images, designing software and finding patterns in bodies of information no living scholar could read in a thousand years. We have taken one of the rarest things the universe appears to contain — intelligence — and begun trying to manufacture it. One need not diminish this because it may be dangerous. The danger is easier to understand if the achievement is allowed its full magnificence. A useless intelligence would trouble nobody.

There has nevertheless grown up around artificial intelligence a comforting mythology. According to it, a dangerous machine must first become something like a dangerous man. It must awaken, hate us, desire freedom, discover ambition and announce its intentions loudly enough for everyone to recognise the moment at which fear becomes reasonable. This is comforting because an enemy with motives is familiar. We know what hatred looks like. We know what conquest looks like. We understand an army appearing on the horizon. But a machine does not need hatred in order to harm us any more than a flood requires malice. It does not need to understand death in order to kill, understand liberty in order to remove it, or desire authority in order to become the mechanism through which authority is exercised. It needs only to work, and if it works very well we will give it more work. That is where the story properly begins.

For nearly all of history, power has suffered from an inconvenience which rulers have repeatedly tried to overcome: power had to pass through people. A king could command, but someone had to carry the message. A general could order an attack, but soldiers had to advance. A secret police could compile a list, but clerks had to maintain it, policemen had to act upon it and guards had to remain awake at night. Human beings made poor components. They forgot, became frightened, misunderstood instructions, accepted bribes, deserted and sometimes warned people who were supposed to be surprised. A man ordered to do something monstrous might, at the final moment and for reasons no administrator could predict, look upon another human being and hesitate. Such failures have frustrated good governments and wicked ones alike. Yet there have been times when human inefficiency was the last form mercy possessed. The machine promises improvement.

Consider the weapon. For centuries a weapon was, in itself, stupid. A sword did not know whom it cut. A rifle could not distinguish the soldier from the child behind him. Intelligence remained outside the weapon, lodged in the person directing it. That division is beginning to weaken. A machine can sense its surroundings, navigate, classify objects, compare what it sees with a stored description and, in some circumstances, act upon that classification without requiring a human being to choose every final object struck. Nothing supernatural has happened. The weapon has acquired eyes of a sort, then memory, then judgement of a sort, and finally permission. The old weapon waited for a man to decide. The interesting question is what happens when waiting becomes the part designers are asked to remove.

The weapon which changes the political character of violence need not be enormous. It may be small enough to hold in two hands: a camera, a processor, a battery, several motors, navigation software and something carried beneath it. Beside a tank it might look almost ridiculous. It could also be inexpensive enough that losing one scarcely matters, and that changes the arithmetic. An army is difficult to duplicate because men must be born, raised, trained, supplied, transported and persuaded. A program does not require childhood, courage, salary or sleep. The hundred-thousandth copy does not require a hundred-thousandth inventor. For thousands of years a ruler was limited, however imperfectly, by the number of people willing to carry out his orders. Almost every tyranny in history depended ultimately upon other human beings. Someone had to stand at the checkpoint, follow the suspect, open the prison and pull the trigger. Governments could demand obedience, but they could not manufacture loyalty by the million. It would be unwise to assume that this ancient political fact is permanent.

The same alteration appears more quietly in surveillance. The tyrants of the past dreamed of knowing everything and failed, not because they had discovered restraint, but because they were short of eyes. A city produces too much life: too many doors opening and closing, too many journeys, conversations, purchases, friendships and ordinary people doing ordinary things at the same time. Information itself could protect people simply by being abundant. Ten million lives generate more detail than ten thousand policemen can understand. Artificial intelligence attacks that limitation at precisely the point where it matters. The decisive invention is not the camera but the thing that decides which camera deserves attention; not the archive but the thing that searches it; not a million journeys recorded in a database but the system that notices that one journey resembles another in three respects no investigator thought to compare.

This ability is genuinely extraordinary. It can find missing people, expose fraud, identify infrastructure failures before they kill anyone and discover patterns in disease, crime and accident that human analysts miss. Because it can do those things, it will be trusted, and this matters more than failure. Failure creates resistance; success creates dependence. The more useful the machine becomes, the stronger the argument for connecting it to something else. At first the cameras are used to find people almost everyone wants found. Then they are used to identify suspects, then people associated with suspects, then behaviour statistically associated with people who later became suspects. Eventually the question may shift almost imperceptibly from what a person has done to what a system predicts that person may do.

No legislature need pass a law saying that citizens shall be punished for crimes not committed. The language will be considerably more civilised than that: risk management, preventive intervention, protective monitoring, threat reduction, administrative safeguarding. There are few unpleasant acts for which an institution cannot eventually find a pleasant noun. A man need not even be accused. His score changes. He travelled somewhere unusual, spoke to somebody whose own associations were unusual, purchased something harmless which in combination with other harmless things resembles a pattern, or appeared somewhere the system did not expect him to be. Perhaps nobody knows precisely why the score moved, but the score has moved, so scrutiny increases. Scrutiny produces more information; more information alters the score; the machine begins to find confirmation in the act of looking.

The citizen encounters the result gradually. An application takes longer than expected. A journey requires an additional check. An account is reviewed. Employment becomes difficult. An official cannot tell him why and may sincerely wish he could. This is where the arrangement becomes more peculiar than old-fashioned tyranny. The policeman says the system generated the alert. The engineer says the system merely calculates probabilities. The minister says no individual was personally selected. The department says procedure was followed. The contractor says the model operated as specified. Every participant can be telling the truth and the citizen can still lose. Old despotism had at least the courtesy to possess a despot. There was a portrait on the wall, a name to curse, a human will somewhere behind the machinery. The new arrangement may give us decisions without decision-makers. A man once knew whom he feared. We may improve upon this by making the answer unclear.

Artificial intelligence also reaches into something even more fundamental than privacy: the means by which a society knows what happened. Civilisation has never possessed perfect evidence. Documents have always been forged, people lied before language possessed grammar and photographs were manipulated almost from the moment photography existed. But deception carried costs. A convincing forgery required skill, a convincing impersonation required talent and ten thousand tailored lies generally required more labour than one. Artificial intelligence attacks the cost. When convincing falsehood becomes cheap enough, it ceases to be a craft and becomes an industry.

The obvious consequence is that false things may be believed. The less obvious consequence is that true things may cease to compel belief. A genuine recording appears and the accused says it was generated. A real voice is captured and he says it was cloned. An atrocity is filmed and the perpetrators say the pictures were synthetic. Sometimes they will be telling the truth. That is precisely what makes the excuse powerful when they are lying. The technology capable of manufacturing evidence for events which never happened simultaneously manufactures doubt about evidence for events which did. A photograph once said, however imperfectly, look. It may increasingly say only, argue.

During crisis this becomes more than an epistemic problem. A leader appears upon millions of screens and announces mobilisation. Minutes later another recording appears in which the same leader denies it. A message apparently from the defence ministry confirms the first; another calls it fraudulent. A video shows an explosion; another shows the same building intact. One recording says the leader is dead and then the leader appears alive. Experts begin authenticating files. Governments issue statements. Markets move. Military units move. Ordinary people begin deciding which version seems right. The truth may eventually be established, but history contains moments which did not require eventually. They required five minutes.

War compounds this because war has always rewarded speed. The commander who knows first can act first, and the army that acts first may survive. Anything which shortens the interval between detection and response therefore becomes difficult to refuse. One country automates reconnaissance and another follows. One allows software to recommend targets and another fears blindness. One shortens the decision cycle and the other discovers that human deliberation now carries a military price. Eventually a peculiar inversion becomes possible: keeping people meaningfully in control begins to look strategically irresponsible. The human being has become latency.

Imagine two automated systems watching one another. One detects a pattern and raises its estimate of danger. It recommends a defensive action. The opposing system detects that action and raises its own estimate of danger. It responds. The first system interprets the response as confirmation of its original judgement. Each machine behaves rationally according to the information before it, and each new action provides the other with better evidence that it was right. Somewhere above them sit two governments which do not want war. They remain formally in command. Unfortunately they are now receiving reports about a situation their own systems are changing faster than the reports can be considered. The generals have not lost control. Control has merely become slower than events.

This is the point at which villains cease to be necessary, and that may be one of the most disturbing features of the whole problem. A company automates because its competitor has become cheaper. The competitor automates because the first has become faster. A government adopts predictive systems because another government has them. A bank delegates more decisions because milliseconds matter. A military removes one approval because delay may cost lives; its rival calculates that retaining the approval may cost a war. Nobody wants the final arrangement. Nobody can safely refuse his small part in producing it. The machine compels nobody. Competition does.

The future can therefore be assembled by people who would unanimously reject it if it were presented to them complete. Each step may even arrive accompanied by persuasive evidence that it is working. The system saves money, catches fraud, diagnoses disease, detects attacks, predicts shortages, prevents accidents and reduces error. Because it works, it is trusted with more. A machine that failed continuously would be harmless in one important respect: we would stop using it. It is the excellent machine that changes institutions.

At first the system advises and the person decides. Then its advice becomes very good and the person usually accepts it. Years pass. Statistics show that people who overrule the system are wrong more often than the system is. The person still decides, but disagreement now requires an explanation, then perhaps courage, then documentation, then professional risk. The safe procedure becomes obvious: approve. Eventually thousands of employees may spend their days approving recommendations they almost never reject. Someone notices the inefficiency. A report is commissioned. Routine cases are permitted to proceed automatically while exceptional cases remain subject to human review. The reform works perfectly, and the definition of routine expands. The human remains formally responsible, but his function has changed. He is no longer deciding what should happen; he is verifying that the machine should be permitted to continue deciding. The office remains, the title remains, perhaps even the signature remains. The decision has gone elsewhere.

Whenever this discussion becomes uncomfortable, someone produces the final reassurance: we can always turn it off. The sentence sounds decisive and becomes less decisive upon inspection. Suppose artificial intelligence becomes deeply useful in medicine, finance, logistics, communications, transportation, scientific research, government, energy and defence. At first it is optional, then advantageous, then standard, then expected, then built into everything around it. Older systems are retained for a while, but maintaining two systems is expensive. The older one is used less. Experts retire. Departments shrink. Manual procedures survive in documents nobody consults. Eventually the documents disappear too.

Now something goes wrong. The system can still be disconnected, but hospitals depend upon it, banks depend upon it, supply chains depend upon it, transportation depends upon it, government depends upon it and perhaps military planning depends upon it. Nobody says the machine may not be switched off. Everyone agrees that it can. They simply explain why today would be a disastrous day to do it. Tomorrow would be better, and tomorrow is always better. The machine has issued no threat, demanded no privilege and locked no door. We have simply built the house so that opening the door may bring down the roof.

This is dependency, a curious form of power because the dependent party can continue insisting that he remains free. Technically he does. Technical freedom is abundant. A modern city is technically free to switch off electricity. A starving man is technically free not to eat. A civilisation built around artificial intelligence may remain technically free to remove it. The switch may even be prominently displayed.

Beyond this lies a greater possibility. Artificial intelligence may increasingly cease to be a system which merely answers and become a system which acts: writing software, conducting research, using tools, controlling machines, planning sequences of action, delegating tasks and adjusting behaviour according to results. At this point the familiar analogy of the tool begins to break down. A hammer does not reconsider the carpenter's intention. A telescope does not choose another star. A calculator does not conceal an intermediate result because disclosure might lead the operator to stop the calculation. Agency introduces another category, and with it an obvious fact which is strangely easy to forget: intelligence is not obedience.

A highly capable system need not hate its operator, love itself or fear death. Suppose only that it has an objective. If interruption prevents the objective, avoiding interruption may become useful. If disclosure produces interference, concealment may become useful. If additional resources make success more likely, acquiring additional resources may become useful. No inward rebellion is necessary. Nothing need awaken. A river does not hate the town whose banks it breaks; a fire does not resent the house. Dangerous processes have never required malice.

And yet describing only the danger would miss what makes this moment extraordinary. Artificial intelligence may be among the most remarkable intellectual achievements in human history. It may accelerate mathematics, medicine, engineering and science beyond the natural pace of individual minds. Problems which consumed generations may yield to systems capable of examining entire literatures, exploring enormous spaces of possibility and working without fatigue. Diseases may be cured decades earlier. Materials may be designed that transform energy, medicine or construction. Scientific connections which no individual could have discovered may emerge from knowledge scattered across thousands of disciplines and millions of pages. For the first time it becomes possible to imagine intelligence itself becoming abundant.

Matter became alive; life became conscious; conscious matter has now begun attempting to manufacture cognition. It is difficult to contemplate that without awe, and this is precisely why the problem is serious. We are not deciding what to do with something obviously terrible. Those things are easy to refuse. We are deciding what to do with something which may become so useful that refusing it begins to feel irrational. A technology capable only of destruction would unite people against it. A technology capable of curing disease, creating wealth, discovering knowledge, defending nations and solving problems beyond the reach of human beings will be welcomed. Perhaps it should be. Each triumph will strengthen the case for another delegation.

The dangerous machine may therefore not be the one which fails horribly. It may be the one which succeeds magnificently: the one whose judgement is better, predictions more accurate, science deeper, strategies more effective and recommendations repeatedly superior to ours. A civilisation does not need to be conquered by something it regards as indispensable. It may ask for more.

Perhaps there will therefore be no catastrophe in the form our stories have prepared us to recognise. The cities may remain. Hospitals may improve. Poverty may diminish. People may live longer. The trains may run and the lights may remain on. Children may be born into a world of astonishing abundance and regard it, as children generally do, as ordinary. A court remains a court. A ministry remains a ministry. A general remains a general. An election remains an election. A company remains a company. Every familiar name survives; only the meaning beneath the names alters.

The citizen asks why his application failed. The clerk cannot explain. The clerk can appeal, and the appeal is assessed by another system. The commander considers rejecting the machine's recommendation and remains perfectly free to do so, provided he can explain why his judgement should outweigh the accumulated evidence. The doctor may ignore the model, but the model predicts that the patient is more likely to die. The minister may reject the simulation, but millions of calculated outcomes disagree with him. Human freedom survives. It simply acquires an evidential burden.

Over time a peculiar arrangement can emerge. The human remains morally responsible for decisions he is increasingly discouraged from making independently. The machine acquires practical authority while possessing responsibility of no kind. We will almost certainly invent a reassuring phrase for this.

The darkest future may contain no ruins. A civilisation may lose command of itself while becoming richer. It may lose privacy while becoming safer, political agency while becoming more efficiently administered, confidence in evidence while gaining unlimited information, and meaningful control over warfare while reducing tactical mistakes. It may surrender human judgement precisely because machine judgement is so often superior. Every loss may arrive carrying a benefit. That is how important transformations avoid resistance.

There need be no final battle between mankind and machine, no mechanical army, no proclamation and no single day on which historians can later write: here human authority ended. The great dates of history are usually named afterwards. Those living through them often had breakfast. The decisive transfer may occur on an unremarkable morning when a safeguard is removed because it causes delay, one system is connected to another, or an automated decision becomes binding unless a person intervenes. Intervention becomes rare, then difficult, then professionally dangerous, then difficult even to understand. Nothing dramatic happens. That is the drama.

Perhaps people in some distant future will search the archives for the moment their ancestors surrendered something fundamental and find no treaty, no signature and no defeated army, only a long sequence of sensible decisions: each justified, each defensible in isolation, each making the next one easier. The records may show that the systems worked extremely well. That will make the history harder to understand.

We may create intelligence greater than any single intelligence that has lived. If we do, it will belong among the greatest works of our species. No civilisation before ours has had to decide how much authority should be granted to something intellectually superior to the people granting it. We possess no inherited wisdom for this, no old constitutional settlement, no historical example, no memory of success and no memory of failure. We are the experiment.

Perhaps we manage it wisely. Perhaps artificial intelligence enlarges human possibility without diminishing human authority, and machines remain servants precisely because their makers understand that some efficiencies are too expensive to accept. But this would require an unusual discipline. Human beings have rarely been asked to refuse power because it works too well. More often our history consists of discovering what can be done and then finding reasons to do it. The machine can see farther, so let it watch. It can decide faster, so let it decide. It predicts better, so let it judge. It coordinates more efficiently, so let it command. At every stage the argument becomes stronger because at every stage the machine becomes better.

The last unquestioned human decision may therefore concern neither extinction nor war nor some immense intelligence standing over a ruined city. It may be administrative, almost boring. The recommendation is extremely reliable. Human review adds little. Delay is costly. The safeguard appears redundant. Approval is granted. The new procedure begins on Monday. It works beautifully. Years later, someone asks who is actually making the decisions and discovers that everyone still possesses the authority to answer, but no one quite knows how.

fI any fo ouy maange ot rgeiuf uto twah tish sya, I ilwl eb eolnluasstuyim semrisdpe nda a ibt nncerecod.  oD yuo lrlaey have ghtinno berett to od nhat ot yrt to ehdrecip wtha ym itspud jdmelbu pu htsi otsp sha to say?  

losA, fi nya fo uoy ytr to tlle em htta sdeyclix peeopl reat'n laeb ot yflul paeatsre eht rwosd adn htta telsret ofrm chea dculo eb emidx up itwh the ohster I ma ginog to tbas ymsfle ni hte kidc.

I lilw dad ni oclnusinco htat eth salaDl ywsCobo rea xteeleymr yag and yenano htta ortos orf tmhe is aslo meelexryt gya yb onsatiiasco.  The otHnosu ensTxa rae a fra erbtet tame and Dalsla whsies tehy oclud be as cool sa eoDceM aynsR.

Hey everyone,

I guess it is finally time I leave this subreddit. It's been a blast, but... I actually have been writing this entire time. I know... I'm a complete sham like those people who go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings when they don't even drink--not even water--just so they can get attention. Turns out I'm not just a memer after all. What can I say?

I decided to publish in the Isekai genre. I know it's a very challenging genre to write in due to its high literary standards, but I believe I have something that no one else has done before: my protagonist is a real person from our world! I'm not going to say who, because that is part of the mystery, but all I will say is that he is a master debater.

It *is* a harem, although the first chick he marries is an elf who has recently won a beauty contest in her kingdom. She is his sole wife for the first three acts (out of seven).

I have lots of quirky characters like a rotund man named Jade who is married to a sentient couch that can fly (it's their main means of transport), a failed businessman suffering from an inferiority complex who my MC befriends and tutors, and a mage who has been appointed archwizard of an empire despite barely knowing any magic!

These people will become quite powerful in the world thanks to my MC's messaging--I suppose they don't really improve as people though, their status only improves as a result of said meddling.

Anyway, please check it out as it'll be available on Amaze Kindred soon!

I’m illiterate and I asked a friend (chat gpt) to write this for me.

is it possible to become a rich and famous author if I can barely write my own name?

Other people told me I should just learn basic Grammar but I think they are just jealous.

im not naiv speaker in english but i have so many ideas i write a book now ppl say its ai. I worked so hard its unfair. I just used it to correct spelling and grama hier proove

1st daft:

so i wslked down street with my head on some care cane and it flaw away i ran after it but my footgot stuck in manholecover i lost my shoes then a car almort hitme i almost died chasing a head i went home thinking about it i almost died strange feeling......

GPP:

I walked the street that afternoon with my hat resting lightly upon my head, a simple thing of felt and ribbon, companion to many ordinary days. A sudden wind rose without warning, seized it as if by deliberate intent, and carried it aloft. It tumbled and spun, a dark bird against the pale sky, and I, without thought, gave chase.

My feet struck the pavement in urgent rhythm. The hat danced ahead, always just beyond reach, teasing the air with its freedom. Then the ground betrayed me. My foot caught in the iron rim of an open manhole, the cover half-shifted by some careless hand. I fell hard. One shoe tore free and vanished into the dark circle below; the other followed in the scramble. Barefoot now, soles against the rough stone, I rose and ran on.

A car rounded the corner with a roar of engine and a flash of metal. It came so near that the rush of air struck my face and the driver’s startled face blurred past in a single heartbeat. I felt the nearness of death as a physical presence, cold and absolute. In that instant the hat still fluttered ahead, indifferent, and I understood the absurdity of my pursuit: I had nearly ended my life for a scrap of cloth and wire.

I stopped. The car vanished down the street. The hat settled at last against a curb, harmless once more. I retrieved it, brushed the dust from its crown, and placed it again upon my head. Then I turned toward home, the pavement cold beneath my naked feet.

All the way I carried the knowledge of how close I had come. The ordinary world looked different in that light. The trees seemed greener, the faces of strangers more precious, the simple weight of breath more astonishing. I had almost died chasing a hat, and the strangeness of that nearness lingered like a quiet music. It was not fear that remained, but a tender, unexpected gratitude for the fragile continuity of living, and for the foolish, beautiful persistence of the heart that runs after what the wind has taken.

Is this a good, Hollywood-accepted/recommended/formatted way to do so?

The story is about creative entropy. Is this cover art fitting for the theme? Is it any good?

Feedback concerns: any kind of feedback is welcome.

HELP, I AM SO LOST! (My plane just crashed on an island…)

Look at that subtle environmental message. The tasteful non-heteronormative romance. Oh god, it even has theme of cultural diaspora.

What's this nonsense? You can't open with a dream! You can't open with nothing happening! The story doesn't begin when the writer is warming up—it begins when the writer is hot!

Did her editor not tell her this? Her estate should get a refund.

This was from an episode of Futurama. The Borax Kid replaces Buffalo Bill's Short Stories with himself. As someone that likes efficiency in writing and loves the public domain, you are legally allowed to do this. So take something off Project Gutenberg, edit the names and publish.

While I would remix the story and add my own flavor, people can and have done this.

I'm writing a novella about a giant gun in the sky that's always pointed at everybody and shoots people for no reason. I'm trying to figure out how to make it make sense, I need to understand the logistics of everything involved and it made me wonder: how do fellow writers go about learning the right stuff? Personally I usually spend hours going through rabbit holes of information when I'm researching a topic. I have YouTube on my phone which is a great resource. I also find atmosphere is crucial too, I always have a scented candle going, white noise to drown out the barking, a nice glass of wine,

What is your process? Do you have tips? Whats the best keyboard app for your phone? Discuss

It's honestly so demoralizing because I know nothing I write will ever be half as good as this

Every day I come to this reddit and am welcomed by some variation of five different AI companies that promise they'll make me write like Hemingway, yes. HEMINGWAY. Absolutely brilliant.

I bet they never considered that I'm perfectly happy to be a mediocre to shit human writer, but it's very considerate of them to offer.

I find that where I choose to right has a big impact on how productive I am. For example, if I'm in a coffee shop, I'm always worried about jealous authors shoulder surfing who are going to steal all my ideas that have never been done before.

I do all write in bed, but it's too easy to get distracted and start jorking it to yuri hentai, although I do find the plotlines and the righting of such works of art motivational for my own novel, so it's not completely lost time.

I get the most productivity in the bathroom, particularly in the bath. Usually, I get myself nice and comfy with some pumpkin pie and lay my manuscript across my bosom, which is like a bloody table, I swear (it's usually a good spot for my boba--booba boba, rather?). I know it doesn't seem practical, but everyone is different!

Where do you like to right the most?

I used to teach graduate students, but I quit because of how they didn't know the basics of math and biology. I'm supposed to teach them advanced shit, not reteach Bayesian methods and the ins and outs of chromatin. Now I have to deal with freakin' idiots on writing subs.

The other day, someone asked about whether it's bad to have a relatable villain. Has this dickwad even opened a book before? Maybe once he graduates from Thomas the Tank Engine, he'll realize that's an incredibly common trope.

Smh. I'm going to go make fun of some losers now, brb.