I recently started another playthrough of Fallout 4, and realized this game from 2015 parallels some concerns we have seen emerge in recent years over generative artificial intelligence. This also reminds me of other media featuring artificial humans, androids, and the like. Let's discuss it.

Star Trek

Many Star Trek episodes feature robots, androids, and synthetic life forms. Some, like those in the original series episode I, Mudd operate under simplistic logic as adversaries susceptible to a BSOD crash once our heroes discover their shortcomings. Others, as seen in What Are Little Girls Made Of? almost perfectly duplicate a human.

By The Next Generation, Data the android is a main character who desires to become more human, while the Borg are a hostile alien collective who seek to conquer and absorb all life into their mechanical idea of perfect machine conformity.

Deep Space 9 feature little in the way of androids, but the changelings who can masquerade as humans to infiltrate and destroy their enemies serve a similar function.

Finally, in Voyager, the Doctor is a holographic projection with a growing sense of individuality and the self comparable to Data from TNG. I do not acknowledge any series after Voyager.

In Star Trek, androids can pursue careers in Starfleet, challenge their legal presumption as property, and behave as autonomous individuals with their own desires and experience growth. Some see our generative A.I. models as nascent sentience becoming alive today. I don't buy it, though.

Fallout 4 and Synths

Bethesda concept art, synth manufacturing facility in the Institute Robotics Center

In the Commonwealth of 2287, 210 years after nuclear war devastated the globe, a secret underground facility beneath the Commonwealth Institute of Technology is the base of operations for a group of scientists who seek to replace humans with synthetic androids. The survivors on the surface see these "synths" as a threat, and they aren't entirely wrong... but I'll leave any further story spoilers for you to experience by playing the game, or doing your own web searches.

In short, these synths are manufactured to be indistinguishable from humans. They are made of flesh and blood. Aside from some strange components which can typically only be found after killing the suspected synth post-mortem, they can almost perfectly duplicate humans and even replace someone to serve as a doppelganger who covertly manipulates the public into serving the interests of the secretive Institute.

Is A.I. a secret scheme for controlling us? I don't think so, but there are concerns that A.I. is harming the ability to think for critically when people use it as a crutch, and of course the mega-corporations behind these models are scraping data from the web and its users to build better and better facsimiles of creativity for their own nefarious ends. I don't trust 'em.

The Automatons

One of the enemy factions threatening Super Earth in Helldivers II is the Automatons, the android soldiers built by the Cyborgs. These are very obviously mechanical beings with only an approximation of human likeness. Their cyborg masters were once humans, but are now heavily (and obviously) augmented by robotic technology. These are a direct threat to Managed Democracy, and anyone who sympathizes with their treacherous lies should be immediately sent to Democracy Camp for reeducation.

In-game lore aside, is our A.I. today a threat to humanity? Energy consumption for data centers seems wasteful, and the slop they create is proving less than helpful for many corporations eagerly incorporating it. The companies behind these models are losing money, and the costs for tokens are not being recovered in savings or efficiency so far.

In short, the bots are the enemy. Don't believe their lies, and don't sympathize with their masters!

I, Robot

book cover image source

On the other hand, science fiction author Isaac Asimov presented a more complex idea of humanity, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Across many novels and short stories, he built a universe were androids were incorporated into society. Hollywood adaptations have ranged from decent to schlock. On the whole, however, his vision of the future saw robots as beneficial. The three laws of robotics were a safety measure which, despite some obvious shortcomings and loopholes, set boundaries to prevent artificial intelligence from becoming hostile and destructive.

We don't have those safeguards. Hallucinated slop hurts those seeking factual information, and malicious actors target gullible people. Models have proven dangerous. The old computer adage of "garbage in, garbage out" is multiplied when human oversight is minimized, but minimal human involvement is often the aim of early adopter A.I. hype. I don't think Asimov presented realistic predictions at all here.

I do recommend the short story collection anyway.

Inconclusive Conclusion

Many more ideas from fiction could be explored: System Shock, Marathon, The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Terminator franchise only scratch the surface. Most are dystopian, and my pessimistic view of human nature leads me to think those predictions are closer to reality than the utopian optimism exuded by A.I. proponents.

We are in the early days of A.I. tech, and this very sentence makes me feel almost like I am making an A.I.-generated neutral slop machine, but we don't know what the future will bring. I can see A.I. becoming a useful tool to offload drudge work more efficiently than classic algorithmic computing. Advanced pattern recognition and data analysis can potentially improve medicine and engineering.

I remain unconvinced that it is ready for widespread implementation, and I hate the proliferation of slop at the expense of real human creativity, especially in modern social media and advertising. Clickbait has only been further enshittified. Advertising is at unprecedented levels of obnoxiousness and deception. It's just tiresome now. But is that the point of A.I. implementation these days? Make everything even more bland and distasteful? Maybe that's where real human creativity can break through the rush toward mediocrity.

A.I. is not a savior, but it is also not the Antichrist. Like any other technology, it should be used deliberately to achieve a specific end rather than as a frivolous content factory for forgettable filler. Stand out from the crowd. Advertise human creativity as a selling point for your writing, your photography, your advertising, your code, and your art. Maybe it won't reach the masses, but we want to seek the people who celebrate individuality instead of uniformity anyway, especially here on Hive.

Agree? Disagree? Want to chat about your favorite androids and A.I. in media? Need to spam an A.I. slop rant about irrelevant nonsense? Comment below, and I will try to reply and/or vote accordingly.