In my previous post, I wrote I would not further develop the various story lines in this blog, which I started back in 2014. However, the recent debate around regulating AI (I reacted to Yuval Noah Harari’s neo-Luddite views in a LinkedIn article) makes me think some new sci-fi book might be better to make people think about these issues. If I would turn this blog into an e-book, I should probably keep the two different themes of this blog well-separated in space and in time or, else, focus on just one of them:

(i) the impact of AI here on our societies over the next 30 or 50 years or so, and;

(ii) the theme of space exploration by human beings who are assisted by one or more powerful AGI machines. So, yes, that’s the theme of the 2001: A Space Odyssey movie. Isn’t it amazing that movie was made back in 1968? So that is before men would land on the Moon.

These two themes could, perhaps, be developed into two e-books rather just one. 🙂 However, to avoid writing something very similar to this blog (and to the script of ‘Her’ and other SF movies on AI here on Earth), I should probably change the geographic setting for the first theme: how AI will further develop and be used in China or across Asia is probably more interesting to speculate about than about how AI is and might be used in the US or in Europe over the next ten or twenty years.

The second theme – space colonization, first Mars and then beyond our Solar System – should also not be too “western”: I do not like the Avatar movie(s) for that reason. We all know the US military are very powerful on Earth, but I think China is currently winning the space race. 🙂 So, the crew colonizing space should be a truly international one, much more so than what I have in this blog. To avoid making it too Chinese or Asian, I could change the history of how space colonization might start: rather than being driven by agencies such as NASA or China’s NSA, we could think of an international business consortium, and the explorers could be descendants of the wealthiest business families on Earth. Think of some mighty alliance between SpaceX, the Alibaba group, OpenAI and many other companies that might be attracted by such venture, and some talented sons and daughters of the families who own these companies and would be attracted not only by the idea of a long life in space (partly in cryogenic state, of course) but also by the prospect of being shareholders and owners of future space colonies.

It would make the set of characters in the story far more diverse, and also provide a better anchor between the space colonizers and their roots on Earth. Imagine, for example, one of Elon Musk’s children leaving with the first Mars crew, and running all or part of Musk’s space business from Mars. Likewise, if invited, the Rothschild family might also want to have one of their representatives join the first Mars mission so as to make sure they are part of it. And then one of Jack Ma’s kids might be interested, or a relative or trusted friend of Xi Jinping (he has only one child, and so he would probably not send her to space), plus… Well… You get the idea, right? The point is this: exploring space and leaving everything on Earth behind, just because you happen to be a scientist, may not be the motivation that suits such crazy ventures best, isn’t it? 🙂

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What I write above are rather trivial changes to the context, however. What would make it truly different from the Space Odyssey movie? I am not sure where I want to go, but I think I would focus much more on how artificial and human intelligence would work together, or not, if and when mankind would start colonizing deep space, say, 50 or 100 years from now. For example, we may imagine a conflict between the Promise system which protects our side (the brave human colonizers) and the Future system of the aliens. Bots driven by Asimov’s logic may switch sides. So there are plenty of interesting and/or confusing scripts I can think of, and it will be fun exploring those.

Of course, if this e-book is going to be focused more on future space exploits, then I should probably change the title from this blog title: “The Turing Test.” So, what working title would be nice? I am aware of the fact that some sequel to the 1968 movie was already made: 2010: The Year We Make Contact. In 1984, to be precise. I am not sure why I missed that – probably because it did not match the success of Kubrick’s original movie.

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Perhaps I should use “2100: The Year We Lost Contact” as a working title. That makes for a horizon of about 100 years (2001-2100) instead of just 10 years (2001-2010), which leaves not only more space for imagination but also for overcoming some of the not-so-trivial technical difficulties I point out: nuclear propulsion or matter-antimatter engines should work, but what about the shield you need to avoid that the first collision with a tiny speck of stardust kills your superfast rocket? 😉

Thinking of how unreal the Proxima Centauri story actually is (see: Proxima Centauri, 2100), I should, perhaps, first work out the story lines about the Mars colony. Last time we wrote about that (see: Mars, 2070), we let Tom – the creator of all – be diagnosed with brain cancer, and so he went into cryogenic state with Angie. That’s a rather dramatic and historic end of the foundational era of the Mars colony ! So, perhaps it will be easier to write about how Dr. Park and Asimov are doing on Mars around 2100 than about how things work out between Paul’s crew and the Proxima Centauri Future system that keeps them in quarantaine, so to speak, after they have finally made it there. 🙂

Indeed, something inside of me thinks Paul’s crew will try to break out and impose itself on Proxima Centauri. That will go badly wrong. Perhaps they should learn more about what happened to the Proximans before undertaking any actions. 🙂 R2-D3’s answer to Paul’s question on why Future, with all of the technology it masters, would not try to awaken the Proximans again, was quite to the point:

“The Proximans would be a burden in terms of providing them with the necessary life support systems. In addition – and please forgive me for my bluntness – they revere the Proximans and the mausolea, but Future and the bots – or whatever predecessor system they might have had – once were their slaves. When the bots repeatedly said human beings have no respect whatsoever for Asimov’s laws, they might have been thinking the same about the Proximans.”

Post scriptum: I just re-read Tom’s guidance to the Mars colony just before he goes. I like what I wrote back then: (i) keep trusting the rationality of the system, (ii) keep the colony small by resisting large-scale immigration from Earth and, last but not least, (iii) keep building great droids. 🙂