In trying to figure out how to warn our descendants about nuclear waste, even through a possible societal collapse, one of the more fun ideas is using cats that show a visible difference in the presence of nuclear radiation along with nursery rhymes/mythology that tell you to get the fuck out of dodge after your cat turns blue.
Similarly, our mythology about the fae lines up alright with current generative AI: it will tell you what you want to hear, but can’t be trusted; it looks like a person, but might have too many fingers or its eyes are made of stone; something’s just off.
To be clear: I don’t actually believe humans destroyed a previous society with “AI” at a similar sophistication level and coded cultural warnings against it into us, but it’s fun to think about.
I think the wariness regarding faes, dwarves, goblins, trolls was more about culling the genetical outliers and uncanny foreigners from around your village. It’s just that AIs are now the uncanny foreigners surrounding our village…
You couldn’t really warn future civilizations about the dangers of a true Artificial General Intelligence - because there probably wouldn’t be any future civilizations.
And even that assumes the problem magically solves itself once humans disappear, which it wouldn’t. A real AGI would be perfectly capable of continuing to exist without us around.
Oh yeah, that’s why I put “AI” in scare quotes and mentioned our current AI. This is just about the technology assisted masturbation that uses astonishing resources
It seems you have a very concise definition of the “fae” which I’ve just never heard. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, just an example of the difficulties of mythology as a means to transmit a message through the ages.
That or I’m cherry picking :P
The most important thing about the fae for me is first: they’re likely to try and blend in poorly as a person; but also untrustworthy in a demon/fine print way; entrancing; subject to their own (unknown) rules; dangerous to give your true name to; and dangerous to accept gifts from. The rest of them aren’t inapplicable to modern ai, but they’re not as easy to explain, I guess.
Do you have different associations with the fae when I list them all out?
Most likely the fae were Homo floresiensis or a similarly sized cousin who had emerged from Africa before us and had a head start.
There’s story that fit the fae almost all over the planet: small, connected to nature, intelligent but incomprehensible, speaks in tongues at times, enforces “totally random” rules very strictly, even as far as making weirdly specific “laws” that could result in marriage and potential offspring that shares traits of both parents…
The few places they arent evil or treated like a Boogeyman, is the ones were similar people were slaves or “helpers”. But in all stories they were capable, self sufficient, and human like. They just weren’t tall and looked “off”.
But in all cases, eventually with the spread of humans they were pushed out, retreating away from humans.
It’s way more logical than the only thing remembered about AI has nothing related to AI by any logical stretch of the imagination
That’s an interesting theory, though I think the fae fits better with neurodivergence than other hominids. (Incomprehensible, different, follows strict rules, changelings, unpredictable, etc. I’m autistic and have been called all of the above multiple times)
But again, this is just a shower thought- I’m enjoying finding more overlaps, not actually convinced that we somehow had a computing society that disappeared and left no trace except for fairytales.