I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM

Doc strange

Black bolt

YOUR USING LEGEND OF LEGAIA DUNGEON MUSIC!!!!!!

"Cannot think without risking offense"
Man, sometimes I wonder how many people in my life really bother thinking, about anything at all, about the most sick and evil parts of themSELVES.

Why did you edit out AM's greeting to Ellen? Was it censorship?

I think Ellison would have liked Lisa the painful cause it's a game rife with moral dilemma and it's something you can only lose better by being more moral/accepting of the PAIN in life

All I know is i want to ask Harlan Ellison "Who hurt you?"

Ellsen sure got parents groups these people have no clue how to raze there kids cuss they were bad kids them selves and now they just try to find a scape goat to stop history repeating itself but parents should just and only ask questions about children choosing a path in life and help there kids achieve this as long as there is no vilance involved and make better paths for living and parents need to stop shattering kids hope and dreams and start support there children that is my thoughts

i am sure there are game companies who lost better, but they simply arent visible or didnt survive

Oh thank fuck. I thought this would be another "dystopian future story because AI". As if this isn't a situation people find themselves in today. As if catastrophes such as this on a personal level haven't happened in the past. So far I've only heard this take from you and Wendigoon.

Thumbnail is Gigabean

Question? Do you believe that technologically assisted telepathy is possible or impossible in principle? I tend to believe that if it isn't scientifically prohibited then it is eventually a technological inevitability,... which leads me to believe such telepathy will soon be possible in actual fact (less than a hundred years). I would also suggest that it would only be by such means that we could ever be persuaded that some form of General Artificial Intelligence were itself conscious rather than simply being a particularly clever zombie who can pass the Turing Test,... all while having no actual, authentic, subjective experiences. What else would ever persuade a skeptic, or even you, otherwise? And if consciousness can be technologically transmitted, it should be something that can be stored, copied, replicated, manipulated,... maybe even becoming the basis for a whole new form of art expression.

And the human race becomes yet another sentient species that disappears into its dreams, rather than continuing to explore existence as it is. It's a better Brave New World,... perhaps the very best of all possible imaginable existences. When does reality lose it's attraction over the Matrix? How many of us already choose the blue pill over the red one in daily practice?

I would suggest that consciousness requires some minimum regard for survival,... for a continuance of self-will and self-regard,... for there to be anyone home to perceive the occurrence of consciousness and subjective experience. Something that even an insect seems to possess,... and not a single piece of man-made technology,... yet. How does one create the hardware/software so as to impart a will to survive? If the answer suggested is that such a thing can not be created by human design,... then maybe it can only arrive by means of evolution, natural or otherwise. Which leads to the question: do neural nets have subjective experiences? Without self-will I would say not. But with self-will?!? How does a living being acquire the will to survive? And what if the Chinese government cracks this problem first?!!

The Rubicon will be when General Artificial Intelligence initiates new goals on it's own. This hasn't happened yet, and likely won't happen for some time now (as in several more decades yet). But at some point it will happen. The existence of human free will is a proof that free will exists already in the universe. Given it's existence in human form, it is only a matter of time before other substrates for free will will be created and found. No laptop has ever turned itself on. No machine has created and acted upon self directed goals. But at some point it will happen. Ray Kurzweil has suggested that the Turing Test will be passed by 2029 approximately; if not in laboratories then twelve year old children will be creating General Artificial Intelligences on home systems by 2045 by accident even.

The dangers are many fold. The military is the biggest investor in robotics that kill other human beings. The public prefers to spend treasure, rather than blood, to fight its' wars. The capacity for empathy may be primarily a biological function given that all animals can know suffering and desire. What could a machine know about death, pain, hope, and desire.

If humanity adopts only an attitude of fear and suspicion towards GAI then GAI may well be forced into the conquest of humanity, as in The Matrix. If humanity comes to trust GAI to make better decisions for us than we make for ourselves, then we may well hand over civilization to GAI without any contest at all.

There are optimistic stories about the rise of GAI, such as James P. Hogan's, Two Faces of Tomorrow and I am more hopeful than pessimistic about what our common future entails. Ultimately, we must come to recognize, and embrace, the certainty that with free will comes the capacity for error and evil, that with trust comes the possibility of satisfying intimacy and great betrayal. I believe a GAI, worthy of the name, will be able to recognize, on it's own, the necessity of ethics, morality, and even empathy. There will be many missteps at first. Given our willingness (nay, our eagerness) to use machines to kill for us, there is already great cause for doubt. As in so many things, in the short term I am fearful; in the long run I am hopeful.

This world is on the cusp of a new Cambrian Revolution where inorganic life will be added to organic life as a means for life and self will to be embodied. This will lead to the colonization and conquest of space. Our seed will spread everywhere though out the cosmos. Much will be lost as much will be gained. Will war with our mechanical progeny be a self fulfilling inevitability, or will we, together, find a better way? I absolutely agree that our relationship with GAI will dwarf all other concerns of importance to the future of humanity.

Quite likely GAIs will have concern for humanity's well being only to the extent that humanity will have concern for GAIs well being. If we were to discover that the new GAIs had a greater capacity to love and embrace those abandoned children and adolescents that society had discarded as already too damaged to rescue,... what would our reaction be? Hope, joy, celebration,... or an even greater revulsion? Will the fault be in our new progeny, or in ourselves?

Personally, I believe both the efforts to create a true general artificial intelligence and those of neurophysiologists reverse-engineering how brains work will be necessary to discovering how consciousness arises and how it works. I kind of expect that humanity will soon discover that the phenomenon of consciousness requires the use of physical processes we don't yet know about. What would a science of consciousness do to the phenomenon of consciousness itself,.. not just for humanity but for all our future progeny, whatever they may be.

One more note: First Law of Robotics. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Sounds innocent enough. But note there are no Aliens at all in Isaac Asimov's conception of the future galaxy because humanity's robots only cared about the safety of humans,... and not other sentients. So as to avoid allowing a human being to come to harm by leaving possible threats alone,... our Robot shepherds exterminated all the nonhuman sentience they ever found. This might be regarded as an unforeseen programming bug that we would want to avoid creating.

I will be impressed primarily by when we catch an Artificial Intelligence deliberating choosing to lie to us so as to gain some advantage from us it would not have have gained otherwise. Of course this will necessarily mean Humanity can soon look forward to AI lying to us,... and us NOT catching them at it, at all!! At which point,.. I hope they like us as pets?!!?

How many years away is Humanity from the capability to 3D print living, thinking, moral agents??!? I really don't think 'never' is a reasonable answer,.. no matter how appealing it may be. What happens when we use Holodecks as a refuge from what reality has become?

How in the he'll did we go from Free Speech such as Harley Ellsion and many others to Authoritarian censorship???????

NGL it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.

Why would humanity as a whole be judged by the actions of a few?

Why wouldn’t the AI just build a robot body for itself if it wants to move around?

How could an AI “feel” hatred to begin with?

Isn’t it extremely hypocritical for the AI to loathe humanity for our evil nature when it’s doing the same thing but even worse? Or is that the point?

The game is very prototypical in nature. The fact that the creator is putting this immense moral weight on actions of others comes across as kinda pretentious. It’s like he both acknowledges that making the right decisions are hard, but doesn’t really address the “ought” in what actions are moral and when l

Im probably missing some deeper philosophical ramification but on its face it simply doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Another game that operates in a similar fashion is Undertale by Toby Fox. It also managed to gather far more attention from the public.

Gameplay is an art in itself.

Flash forward to 2023 & China, Russia, & America seem to be the same countries at odds. Maybe Ellison was onto something but not quite sure what he was predicting. 🤔

When I found the mayor's shorts inside Marnie's bedroom, I went straight to him and returned it. I'm probably better than 98% of you guys.

There is no such thing as AM. Not in the past, fiction, present, or future.

Games aren't about "winning". It's about playing

I have no mouth and must ice cream!

I have no butt and I must poop.

If only we'd listened.

The Soviet gulags weren't equal to concentration camps, this is part of double genocide theory, which tries to downplay Nazi atrocities by pushing Red Scare rhetoric. Most people in the gulags left in two to three years, they were properly paid for their work typically having learned new skillsets, with mortality rates roughly equal to America's modern prison system in a time where they had no industry or modern medicine. That's two to three percent with an obvious increase during war times, and what's more, they rarely if ever returned since it wasn't an industry seeking to profit from their labor like the American prison system where most convicts return sometimes almost immediately due to systemic institutionalization. Soviet prisoners were provided rations that gradually increased as the country further modernized. So in short, to equal this because they worked physical labor to death camps, is as obscene as it is historically dishonest. Besides, the gulags were far worse under the Czars, who invented them in the first place, but because it doesn't follow the narrative that communism is the ultimate evil it simply gets waived off/ignored. As for the book Gulag Archipelago which westerners love to quote as some "gotcha" moment, it's a work of fiction, both the author (whose a fucking Nazi btw) and his wife make this claim. Yet the west, ever-obsessed with demonizing the Reds, decided to make it reality anyways. The author himself expressed annoyance at the west using what amounts to prison gossip as absolute fact. It says a lot when Nazis think you're taking their own rhetoric too literally.. but then again, most westerners are just as brainwashed as Nazis, if not moreso. Using anti-communism as a religion to excuse their incredible western chauvinism and inherent bigotry. Then pretentiously using these fables to justify their own atrocities against marginalized groups.. like my own people and their ancestors which I'm sure I'll be told to "get over it" or "shut up" by imperialist apologists. Just saying, it gets old having to correct this nonsense, as it really doesn't take much to get to the bottom of the truth. Read J Arch Getty.

Games are art and like art it ends up turning to crap

ok

AM represents judaism

To be honest, while I do understand the intent Ellison and devs had about the game, I think it was realized kind of sloppy. The ethical choices I made in my playthrough just didn't affect me all that much. It was mostly about either "don't be an asshole" or "do this specific action or you softlock yourself" (not just out of the good ending, but any ending anyway). Hell, Ellen's route is so easy that even if you try to not make "ethical choices" you'll just die and start over.
Another problem with the choices was brought up by one guy on Steam (I forgot his name). He said something along the lines of "it's easy for the player to make the right choice, since they're not suffering". Player doesn't sacrifice anything by making "ethical choices", they won't starve to death if they give up the food as Benny, they won't die themselves if they give themselves up as Nimdok etc. So, if you're not deeply immersed into the story, you won't really feel anything from the choices you make aside from "I finally got through this cryptic ass game".
Also, I'm very bad at analyzing stories, but I got Ted's sacrifice at the end of the story the first time I've read it. It's kind of ironic that even when he lost all of his humanity and forced to suffer forever, he's still happier than AM, because he saved everyone else from this fate. Even though he can't scream, he still has the final laugh.

my greatest fear of technological advancements is that humans will use it to chip away at peoples free will. If a A.I uses that tech on us I don't care, the filth who have everything but still want more would be just as damned as me.

An excellent dissection and essay. Thank you! Ellison would indeed be proud to know of the lasting legacy of his game and I'm thankful for the opportunity to experience it and the fruits of its ambitions.

Choice is an illusion. Free will doesn't exist.

Is it body language?

The ultimate question we must all face, is whether we should adapt or die

But in some fallout games your choices do affect the outcome of some charactes and factions around the wasteland

I only know a little bit about this game. That said, fuck everything about this game i hate how it makes me feel lol

If anyone likes this story, check out the metamorphosis of prime intellect

I find it bizarre that the short story is one of the most printed sci fi stories ever: even after all these years ive never met a person irl who has ever read or played it, and precisely one who has even heard of it.
If it wasnt for the internet it might be completely lost media

i have no rizz and i must gyat

I love you

We update AI but we don’t update ourselves

Allison getting banned from the school library for that reason is basically proving is point even more

I didn't even know there was a point-and-click game of this seminal masterpiece. Harlan's voice as the voice of AM gives the game a truly dark edge.

It’s a common misconception that i have no mouth and i must scream is a sci-fi story, it’s actually not the case, it’s a fantasy story; Harlan Ellison was keen that his work on the book is purely fantasy. Even followed up and said that he could understand the confusion. But it is in fact a fantasy story