The PKD short story “Autofac” seems highly relevant. Amazon had the HUGE BRASS BALLS to include this as an episode in “Electric Dreams”:
The PKD short story “Autofac” seems highly relevant. Amazon had the HUGE BRASS BALLS to include this as an episode in “Electric Dreams”:
Absolutely loved that episode. I also thought it was incredible that Amazon was the company to release this.
That Amazon releases this seems to be consistent with the trend the original linked article mentioned: these big tech companies are happy to warn people of the apocalypse they are causing.
It helps not to think of corporations as a single coherent consciousness: hypothetically everyone who works there, from top to bottom, can believe that what they are doing is harmful, but also feel powerless to fight the hand of the market.
In practice I doubt the entire management structure agrees on that, some honestly believe they are doing good, but there's nothing stopping EvilCorp from emerging from a bunch of perfectly good people who are "just doing their job".
"Autofac" is one of my favorite PKD short stories, though it's very depressing and somewhat different from the "Electric Dreams" episode, which (if I remember correctly) started similarly but had a very different implication and outcome.
"Autofac" as originally written seems to me where this AI "utopia" is leading us.