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Teever 15 hours ago

It absolutely is science-fiction.

This recent event is more or less the plot-line to my favourite X-Files episode named Killswitch which was written by William Gibson.[0]

This episode also features one of the coolest intros of any television episode ever[1]

We really are rapidly approaching the cyberpunk dystopia that people like Phillip K. Dick and William Gibson wrote about.

More than ever we need to be consulting the works of fiction writers and philosophers and less engineers and scientists.

We can't be letting the General Rippers and Dr. Strangeloves of the world lead us over the edge. Whether through outright innate maliciousness or wealth induced emotionally stunted solipsism these kinds of people should be no where near the levers of society let alone technology like this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Switch_(The_X-Files)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDyr1JMNHVk

sandos 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Ah, yes, I started thinking about William Gibsons work right away when thinking about people just using powerful AIs, but being hamstrung by corporations.

He writes a lot of about basically DoS:ing the legal system, or if it was patents system, with a storm of litigation using automation or AI. Also not impossible in the future.

simonw 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It reminded me of a bunch of plotlines from Person of Interest as well.