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nosianu 4 days ago

> I want Al to do my laundry

Stanisław Lem has told us about the grave dangers of such a development decades ago.

This is a good summary, summary quoted below, full article linked on the page (requires a login - but reading Lem's story itself is better than reading about it anyway):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/11/30/the-washing-ma...

"Shortly after Ijon Tichy's return from the Eleventh Voyage, newspapers made much of the competition between two washing machine manufacturers. They were producing robot washers of increasing complexity. They came out with sex-pot washers, washers that seduced women, carried on intelligent conversations, etc. A man named Cathodius Mattrass started a religious cult called the cybernophiles, which believed the Creator had intended humans to be a means toward creating electrobrains more perfect than itself. He turned himself into a giant robot and established himself in outer space. A series of court cases ensued. Finally, a special plenary session was held to decide if Mattrass was a planet, a human, a robot, or what, and Tichy was invited to attend. Suddenly, after much argument and deliberation, cries rang out that electronic brains disguised as lawers were present. The Chairman went through the room with a compass and an x-ray machine was brought in. Eventually everyone was kicked outNthey were found to be made of all sorts of thingsNcotton wool, machinery of all kinds. Ijon was the only human, and then he turned the compass on the chairman and found that he, too, was a robot. He kicked out the chairman, paced the empty hall for a while, and then went home."

One problem is, you have to make them into real capable robots, since you want them to pick up what needs washing by themselves. That then leads to feature-creep and ever increasing abilities that have little or nothing to do with washing, and it escalates from there. The story also had gangs of abandoned intelligent washing machines robbing parts from still owned and in use ones, and more.

The story is part of "Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy"

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88321.Memoirs_of_a_Space...

The original Polish book was first published in 1957.

magic_hamster 4 days ago | parent [-]

I think out of everything Lem has written, the idea of seductive washing machines that lead the way to a semi conscious cyborg planet is not the best example for actual tangible dangers o AI.

nosianu 4 days ago | parent [-]

That is not a good representation of the story. I added a few sentences to show you the parts we can already relate to.

In addition to that, we already had discussions here about emails and ads and other things where it is conceivable we end up with AI both creating and consuming the content, with the humans out of the loop (just yesterday: one part email users using AI to create nice long emails, other users using AI to condense them back into the summary).

We also have the kind of feature creep that adds more and more stuff that has nothing to do with the original purpose of the device or the software.

That 1957 story already talks about those kinds of developments.