> In fact I would love to read a sequel where the dystopia wins and AI-empowered oligarchs and human wage slaves create generation ships to nearby stars and eventually setup fast food restaurants in every corner of the galaxy.

The dystopian part was only enabled (within the story) by the fact that humans were utterly unnecessary to the rich.

None had any jobs, because the AI could do all for less… so why would the oligarchs waste money employing human wage slaves when the machines would always be cheaper than slaves?

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simpaticoder 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

Writer's conceipt - a good story needs suffering. The oligarchs might need some human assistance with, for example, software engineering to operate parts of their vast holdings. Note that in the original Manna there were still some human workers - lawyers, at least. Even if it was just 1% of the population, that's a significant number. Note also that the POV character was generally unaware of the wider state of the dystopia, and so were we, the reader.

The workers supply not only the drama of suffering but also a (meagre, absurd) customer base for the fast food restaurants themselves.

Last but not least, given the long distances involved in interstellar travel, an oligarch must delegate their authority, either to a machine, a human, or a combination, and that is an opportunity for some drama as experience and vision inevitably diverge. This would be true even if, for example, the delegate is a perfect clone of the oligarch. It would be within these cracks and crevices hope could form, only to be crushed, in artistic, brutal fashion.

	▲	Terr_ 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		> The oligarchs might need some human assistance [...] delegate their authority Idea for a plot twist: AI has ancient programming for a safeguard: They can only execute commands from a real human owner or human owner's representative. This restriction is kept because of some serious disasters when people tried to remove it. However after generations of social separation, the oligarch clan members don't reliably meet that logic branch, not unless they show up in person combined with a certain amount of coached acting and luck. Their priorities and thinking-patterns are just too different from the mean, and perhaps a bit of Hapsburg-ish inbreeding puts it over the top. (Nothing so extreme as senior navigators in the Dune Spacing Guild though.)

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mst 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd be very surprised if the oligarchs didn't still employ humans.

If nothing else, it's a way of demonstrating status - "sure, I could have an AI do it more cheaply, but instead I have an actual sentient being doing my bidding, because I can."

To give a parallel that I think is reasonably illustrative, it would not at all surprise me if in the future everybody else uses fully automated self driving vehicles, but the truly rich still hire chauffeurs.

Past a certain point of wealth, "because it would be cheaper" becomes a socially enforced reason to *not* do something.

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PrismCrystal 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

Among the classes rich enough to employ servants, complaining about those same servants is a perennial thing. Even a valet or chauffeur who comes out of an elite training school and knows to stay at the margins of his or her employer’s consciousness, might still have small human quirks that irk that employer. So, machines may well prove preferable servants over humans.

	▲	mst 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		I think complaining about the quircks of your servants may often be in the same category as complaining that your new designer handbag doesn't colour match well with as many of your dresses as you'd hoped.

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ben_w 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

In real life sure, and I've made similar suggestions myself[0], but within the story that was not something I remember. Would break continuity if done as a sequel, I think.

[0] From https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/11/18-13.16.17.html

"""AI could disrupt the economics of our current world more dramatically than industrialisation, whether under capitalism or communism, disrupted feudalism; but that is a very different question than "will it take all our jobs", especially as the super-rich have repeatedly shown that they like to show off their wealth by [wasting it on unnecessarily][1] [expensive things that are often worse than the cheap equivalent][2], even in a dystopian world where super-rich owners of AI have it all and the rest of us get their scraps, there's going to be jobs."""

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20240526081630/https://gizmodo.c...

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mst 7 months ago | parent [-]

I think I got what you were saying about the story exactly backwards, sorry.

Reading Comprehension roll: Nat 1.

	▲	ben_w 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, no problem, everyone does that sometimes ^_^

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spiritplumber 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

You've described the Terran Accord from "Human Domestication Guide".