| ▲ | verbify 17 hours ago |
| I once was thinking that if intelligent machines surpassed human intelligence, the end game would be human intelligence would atrophy but the machines would continue to serve us. Then I had a humorous thought - what if this already happened, i.e. cats were superintelligent, invented humans to serve them and then they had no need for their own intelligence. |
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| ▲ | gradus_ad 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's funny to think that no matter how our technology develops, cats will be right there along for the ride, completely ignorant of it all. It's humorously comforting to think of an interstellar civilization powered by fusion and AGI serving cats just as they're served now. Scratching posts on starships seems to be inevitable. |
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| ▲ | jasonwatkinspdx 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The domestication of cats happened because of the invention of farming. If you store grain in a granary, it attracts a lot of insects, rodents, etc. Cats that could tolerate getting close to human settlements found a good food source. And humans like this, because the cats protect the grain without eating it. So you can see why ancient agrarian societies like the Egyptians held cats in high esteem. And despite only having a few thousand years to adapt to each other, ends up cats and humans can understand each other and form emotional bonds pretty easily. I imagine we'll see cats on spaceships of the future just like they were the norm on ships in the age of sail. | |
| ▲ | b112 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This seems like a book. Humans extinct for a billion years, AGI and robots tasked to feed and "take care of the cats". I imagine entire cities, houses built, all empty save cat and humanform robot. | | |
| ▲ | 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | jasonwatkinspdx 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You might like the game Stray. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJawWyRUOBM It's about a cat that lives in a city of robots long after humans are extinct. | |
| ▲ | gmueckl 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I would recommend the two episodes "Three Robots" and "Three Robots: Exit Strategies" from the anthology series Love, Death and Robots if you like this kind of humor. | |
| ▲ | marcher 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In the puzzle game series The Talos Principle, intelligent robots (who were made to outlive humanity after a species-ending global pandemic) seem to have the exact same kind of affinity for caring for cats that humans do. It's actually really sweet and cute. | |
| ▲ | xingped 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This was a minor plot point in that one black mirror episode with the robots on a tourism trip to Earth, lol | | | |
| ▲ | cfraenkel 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | "There will come soft rains" Ray Bradbury |
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| ▲ | nervousvarun 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Obligatory Banks Culture universe reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series Basically when the "minds" are benevolent deities all scenarios are possible including this one. We can spend our time with cats, we can even turn into cats...as he writes about "Changers" who genetically alter themselves or shift species at whim. And as always if someone acts up and violates the Golden Rule they get a slap drone: https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Slap-drone |
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| ▲ | taneq 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Maybe the cats were themselves invented by mice? |
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| ▲ | nakedneuron 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is brilliant. So, if machines will be decent servants to the cats, will humans get x-ed out of the equation? |
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| ▲ | colordrops 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is sort of the story of The Time Machine. |
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| ▲ | cryptonector 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Red Dwarf joins the chat |
