14 KiB
[RT][HSF] Crystal Society - an amazing depiction of slow AI takeoff and alien alien minds.
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Author: u/MagicWeasel Cheela Astronaut*
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Score: 36
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Created: 2017-02-18T09:16:17
Post:
Comments:
u/MagicWeasel [+7] Cheela Astronaut (7 minutes later)
This was posted about a year ago but I neeeeed to talk about it because I just finished the first book (already bought the second! so excited!).
It's absolutely freaking amazing. The way the AI runs is being shown from the inside, and the different goal threads in the AI compete for control by giving each other "strength", a sort of currency. It shows a way that an AI in a box might unbox itself. It shows how manipulative AIs are. It's just... wow.
The consensus seems to be that the second half of the first novel is not nearly as good, but I disagree. In particular, people talk about that one scene being unnecessary and out of left field. I think it was a vitally important scene. It showed the AI's thought processes, how manipulative it was, how much power and information it has over people, and elucidates the goal threads. I never, ever thought I would have enjoyed that scene, but it was so emotionally charged and was kind of a microcosm for the whole thing that it was probably my favourite scene in the entire story. Thank you to the author (/u/Raelifin) for including it, since I know they got a lot of criticism for it.
I didn't mind the shift to space opera. If the aliens weren't any good I would have minded, but they're really good, so they're great. I love AI and I love aliens, so why would I not love them both together? Especially because the AI demonstrates how much better it is than people are.
u/duskulldoll [+8] (a day later)
Even setting aside the sex scene (which was, in my opinion, needlessly gratuitous), I think the second half of the story is noticeably worse than the first.
The story shines when it's about an AI getting out of a box. Everything else -the character writing especially - is pretty mediocre, and the loss of focus on said box-escaping means that the less-good parts of the novel are brought to the fore.
u/MagicWeasel [+1] Cheela Astronaut (a day later)
Nah, I like the characters, I like the worldbuilding, I like all of that. I agree that the premise of the second half is not as interesting as the first half, but that's mostly because AI box problem is such an underexplored gold mine in fiction so of course it's going to be super awesome whereas terrorists/aliens/etc is more standard sci-fi fare. I think if AI Box was an explored premise, this story might get more respect as a coherent unit, since it would be considered "really good AI box stuff" followed by "really good space opera".
I'm about 20% through the second book and it's a bit less gripping in the first parts, but I am full of anticipation. The reviews on amazon make me excited for the denouement...
u/Raelifin [+6] Cult of Face (a day later)
Thank you for your heartfelt comment! It made my day. :)
u/hpmorfan [+5] (4 days later)
I found this story addictive yet rather frustrating. It pulled me in with its novel and intriguing take on artificial intelligence, but then it suffers from a variety of almost predictable flaws that leave me with the feeling I didn't really "grow" from the experience of reading it - to list a few: computers and computation are not presented in a convincing way; there are way too many situations where the AI hero only wins because humans are unreasonably trusting of the word of the AI; more generally, most of what the AI succeeds in doing could have also been done by humans, which makes the story feel more like a self-insert wish-fulfillment fantasy rather than anything really about AI (this includes the sex scenes); the aliens are also a bit of a letdown, as what passes for alienness turns out to be a combination of them being kinda dumb and their language being presented to us mistranslated.
By the way, also, minor pet peeve: being "black" isn't a character trait; it doesn't seem to affect how the other characters interact with Phoenix, so if the only reason to mention it is to get the reader to add racial stereotypes to her character, then it should definitely be removed. If the only reason it is mentioned is to help the reader understand that "she talks like a black person", then this is even more superfluous to what is going on, and probably her whole odd dialect/accent should also be removed.
To expand a bit on things from above...
Wish-fulfillment: two related kinds of Mary-Sueing that pull me out of a story are if I start suspecting either that the author wants to get away with all the implausibly lucky (thinly written) schemes the main character gets away with, or if I suspect that the author wants to have sex with the main character. Of course there are captivating ways to write about a main character who experiences personal growth and success, but, for example, when reading about romantic relationships it is not very compelling to be told how obsessed and sexually stimulated the characters are with each other; it is hard for an author to be convincing about this; if I end up mainly pitying the characters for being shallow then the author probably hasn't accomplished their goals.
Computation: this might all sound like a lot of nit-picking, but in a story about a computer, it is kinda fatal if I lose faith in the author's understanding of computation. The AI is presented as both being capable of mechanical simulations of physics to unprecedented accuracy (generating "holos") and yet struggling to play acceptable chess, something that computers have been doing for 40 years today. The AI is presented both as having so much memory that its state cannot be downloaded to any other computer in the world, and yet somehow it is viewed as impressive when it remembers the state of 3 Rubik's cubes simultaneously (which is, say, 30 bytes of data, truly tiny). The internal state of mind of the AI is presented as something that the AI often reprograms, yet several times parts of the AI complain about how hard it is to learn standard computer programming languages, and somehow the tone of these complaints doesn't sound like a supercomputer struggling to adapt known algorithms, but rather it sounds more like whiny teenagers complaining about homework. Also, despite being a computer with many "threads" running in parallel, somehow the idea of parallel independent (virtual) connections to the internet is viewed as a major obstacle/breakthrough, without being particularly useful to the plot.
Winning without deserving it: as one example of this, there is a scene where someone is considering destroying the AI, for a variety of high-stakes reasonable reasons, and the tipping point is when the AI argues it should be treated as a person. This shouldn't be sufficient to tip the balance in this scene - the characters in this scene had recently killed several people out of no reason beyond temporary expedience. In this story, personhood doesn't give your life an infinite utility, unless you are the main character, it seems. The gullibility of everyone around the AI is also a bit too much of a get-out-of-jail-free card. For example, the programmers never seem to run any diagnostics beyond asking the AI questions (and related interactions), to which it can lie. After the upgrade to install "Heart", for example, one of the first "sanity checks" I would have done as a programmer is to monitor how the internal priority bidding between the threads looked, and upon noticing that Heart won every bid would realize the system was not functioning as intended. This turns into a major plot obstacle. Also, there are two separate instances in the story where the AI does a sort of "Turing test" for the public, and it seems like sloppy writing that the first test is faked, the second one isn't, and no one in the world seems to notice the difference, or point out that neither demonstration is convincing. As I stated at the beginning of this review, if everything that your (perpetually lucky) AI does could reasonably be done by a small group of (perpetually lucky) humans, then I'll be a bit disappointed in your plot.
By the way, brief shout-outs/comparisons to other works:
SI (1st chapter; there was a google doc floating around once with much more) is another crazy story about a self-improving protagonist, where, again, I can't quite tell if the author wants to be his main character or have sex with his main character, and I also can't help but feel that the sexual quirks in the story are more revealing about the author than they should be.
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect is, as described by wikipedia, "a well-writen and very creative, if flawed, piece of work... one of the more important works of fiction to deal with the idea of a technological singularity". And while the "flaw" is some very unusual sex, the sex is far from titillating, included as a visceral way to illustrate the extremes intellectually demanded by the world-building in the rest of the story. This story feels much more sophisticated about how its parts fit together.
The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969) is an enormously influential book that introduced aliens whose gender is fluid. The book examined various aspects of feminism and sexuality through the lens of interaction with and between these aliens, while staying rather "chaste" in the language and depictions. She succeeds at cleanly separating the interesting parts of her subject matter from the distracting side effects of tittilating the reader.
Speaker for the Dead (Orson Scott Card, 1986) pulled the amazing stunt of casually mentioning to the reader several hundred pages into the book that all the humans we had been interacting with were black. By this point, the reader had such firm conceptions of these characters that the additional race detail couldn't change perceptions of the characters, and in this sense the author essentially tricked the reader into relating to characters in a colorblind way.
u/MagicWeasel [+2] Cheela Astronaut (4 days later)
Thanks for the detailed breakdown! I think you make a lot of great points.
I second the recommendation for MOPI; Localroger's other famous work, "Passages in the Void", is also extremely good. (Now I want to post both on here, or at the very least look for previous discussions).
Speaker for the Dead is one of my all-time favourite books. The alien life on the planet described is definitely better than the nameless in Crystal Society. Another great recommendation.
I have not read the other two, though I take some issue with the assumption that a story should avoid "titillating" the reader at all costs. You wouldn't say a story should avoid scaring the reader at all costs, especially when something scary happens in the plot; so I don't think there's an intrinsic problem with the reader having sexy feelings if something sexy happens in the story. If it happens gratuitously then that is a problem of course (unless you're writing a tingler...), but not IMO if it's plot-relevant.
One minor nitpick:
After the upgrade to install "Heart", for example, one of the first "sanity checks" I would have done as a programmer is to monitor how the internal priority bidding between the threads looked, and upon noticing that Heart won every bid would realize the system was not functioning as intended.
That was functioning as intended; Socrates consented to adding Heart, but Myrondin double-crossed him by giving Heart infinite strength to bid with, thus effectively turning Socrates into Heart with a little bit of backup from the others. So Heart winning every bid was intended behaviour.
Finally, I'm partyway through the second book and you'd probably hate it for similar reasons, a lot of the issues are as they are, but moreso.
Also, I believe the author is an actual computer programmer - though without anything I would consider "formal" education, which is arguably worthless these days.
Thanks again for the comment, it was really interesting to read! I'm going to have to see if I can find a copy of Left Hand of Darkness. Could I trouble you for more fiction you would recommend?
u/None [+6] (6 hours later)
Agreed that this book was really, really good. The internal depiction of AI, subtle nods to problem that can go wrong with alignment, and the chillingness of it all make it a must-read.
u/None [+3] (6 hours later)
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u/MagicWeasel [+0] Cheela Astronaut (23 hours later)
the title should already be a hook if you want good scifi.
The title is probably the worst thing about the book IMO. Maybe it's because I'm a Stargate fan, but to me crystals are like... a hallmark of really gimmicky soft sci-fi. Like, it's not much different than if it was titled "quantum society".
Not that I can think of a better title, but I'm quite surprised that the title would make anyone go "oh my god I must read this it sounds like my sort of hard sci fi novel". Maybe if it was called AI Society, or something.
But hey, if you think the title's great then obviously my opinion isn't definitive...
u/None [+3] (a day later)
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u/MagicWeasel [+1] Cheela Astronaut (a day later)
I am glad! Those are the most cool parts of the story IMO. Well that and the first person ai pov....
u/vakusdrake [+2] (an hour later)
While you say "slow takeoff" it should be noted that based on information in the second book, had circumstances been different it could have been more of a medium takeoff.
u/AndrasKovacs [+2] (2 days later)
Note that the second volume of the story is now out. I think it's slightly better than the first one.
u/MagicWeasel [+2] Cheela Astronaut (2 days later)
I'm about 40% of the way through, just as the scene where the penny drops for Face happens. I'm EXCITED.