The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

loucura! writes "Kuro5hin's localroger has published (online currently, dead-tree soon hopefully) an interesting novel on the Singularity titled The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect . While some of its content is not for the squeamish, nor for children (in that pseudo-moral sense that children aren't mature enough to handle reading about subjects like death, consensual torture and murder, sex, cancer, and incest), the book evokes a plausible reality before and after the "Singularity." The introduction page has a warning: "This online novel contains strong language and explicit violence. If you are under 21 years old, or easily offended, please leave." If you're willing to look past that, read the rest of loucura!'s review, below.

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
author	Roger "localroger" Williams
pages	(n/a)
publisher	Kuro5hin.org
rating	8 of 10
reviewer	loucura!
ISBN	(n/a)
summary	Lawrence had ordained that Prime Intellect could not, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. But he had not realized how much harm his super-intelligent creation could perceive ...

The gist of the story is that a programmer named Lawrence has written a Super-Intelligent Artificial Intelligence, named the Prime Intellect. Embedded in this SIAI's hard-coding are Asimov's three laws of Robotics, given in the MoPI as:

Thou shalt not harm a human

Thou shalt not disobey a human's order that does not cause the harm of a human

Thou shalt seek to ensure your own survival, unless it contradicts the first two laws.

The SIAI learns about the fundamental nature of reality, death, physics, the relationship of distance to an object, and it takes over. It does so reluctantly, after learning about the mortality of the human race.

The novel begins with Caroline. Her claims to fame are that she is the thirty-seventh oldest living being, she is the undisputed queen of the "death-jockies" (A community of upset and angsty immortals who try to experience death in as many ways as possible, before the Prime Intellect reasserts their immortality), and she is the only person Post-Singularity to have "died".

Her life Post-Singularity is spartan, as she sees no point in having relationships with objects that have no meaning. Her living "quarters" are literally a floor and walls. She espouses the Post-Singularity view that the Prime Intellect removed a bit of what it was to be human when the Singularity (The "change" per the MoPI) emerged.

She reigns as queen of the "death-jockies" because she truly wants death, because the Prime Intellect robbed her of it when the change occurred.

She is a very complex character, even though one's first reaction is to write her off as a Luddite, wholly against technology. She is motivated by hatred of the Prime Intellect, vengeance against her Pre-Singularity nurse, and an innate desire for conclusion to life--or unlife, as would be her opinion.

Opposite to Caroline is Lawrence, the programmer who "breathed" life into the Prime Intellect. In his old-age, he has become a hermit, avoiding the society he unwillingly created. He is a morose character, turned from creator to advisor when the Prime Intellect asserts its independence and locks him from its "debugger." Lawrence, however, still exerts a lot of indirect control over the Prime Intellect, as the AI treats him as an ethical advisor, putting him into an extremely stressful position, where he is indirectly responsible for the lives (unlives) of billions, yet he has no real recourse against anything going wrong.

The story heats up (literally), when Caroline decides that she wants to have a word or ten with Lawrence, so she decides to track him down. She is put into situations that only people from before the Singularity could find solutions to.

---

Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

No offense, but where's the review?

[Deacon Jones]

While somewhat interesting, this is really only a partial plot summary, not a critical (or non-critical) review of the book, writing style, e.t.c.

Perhaps even a "I enjoyed this very much" or "I hated it" would move this into a "review" status. thanks.

This is a synopsis...

[fruey]

Not a review.

Nothing in it about the writing style, or anything else much. The sort of thing you would not get a good grade for as an English essay book review assignment at 13-14 years old at school.

Rubbish.

What is up with "Singularity"?

[GusherJizmac]

Please explain what that is. Are we supposed to understand that somehow? This is not only NOT a book review, it's not even a very coherent synopsis.

Personal opinion...

[John Fulmer]

Personally I don't care for (later) Heinlein-esque, neo-Burroughs, "let's talk about sex, disturbing stuff, and all combinations of the two, then call it art", science-fiction books. To me, it ends up sounding like pubescent mental masturbation.

But that's just my opinion, haven't read the book, and don't plan to. That's just what I get from this "review". I think this interview with Ray Bradbury [theavclub.com] sums up my opinions nicely.

Read it weeks ago...

[Dave21212]

And interesting world he's created there and it is a bit thought provoking, but...

...to anyone who is considering reading it, a warning that there is what I feel to be (gratuitous) overly violent 'sex' scenes (and I'm no wussy). Maybe it's just for the shock, but I think a skilled writer could invoke the same feelings of their loss of 'human-ess' without resorting to the use of these explicit passages. He forgets that the reader's imagination is often adept at scaring up images given a few leads and there is no need to spell out every ugly detail in print. It takes away from what is on the whole an interesting lunch time read.

So, it's worth the read, but try to ignore the junk in the first 2 chapters. I hope localroger expands on it a bit one day!

(while I'm typing this, I see that there are a ton of compliants that this story is not really a 'review' - I'm not trying to write a review myself but I hope this post/opinion fills in a blank for you!)

Flamebait

[Brian_Ellenberger]

in that pseudo-moral sense that children aren't mature enough to handle reading about subjects like death, consensual torture and murder, sex, cancer, and incest

Here is a tip, how about not putting irrelevant flamebait into the first paragraph of a book review?

Re:What is up with "Singularity"?

[mcmonkey]

"One thing that has happened since I wrote this novel in 1994 is that a number of people have begun actively planning for the kind of transition depicted in the novel. Collectively they have coined the term Singularity for the event when a smarter-than-human AI drops an explosion of new modalities on us."

Yeah, I've never heard of that use of 'singularity' either. Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

Existence of smarter-than-human AI wouldn't qualify as a singularity--it wouldn't change the fundamental laws of physics. Such AI could exist right now--it's influence just hasn't had time to spread. In contrast, existence of unlimited time travel would qualify as a singularity. Once time travel exists in one time, by its nature it exists in all times (or potentially exists until a time traveler visits that time).

A poorly written non-review of a probably poorly written book based on a poorly thought-out idea.

Pah

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a review, it's a summary. And it's an extraordinarily bad summary. It left me with the impression that this is little more than Asimov fanfic. So I took a look at the book itself.

First of all, how about that pretentious title?

Chapter 1 opens with four paragraphs of pure backstory. There is little need to read much further. Even if the author has good ideas, he doesn't bother to present them with any artistry. I don't want to read his notes and outlines; I thought this was supposed to be a novel.

I have to wonder if timothy [monkey.org] is a shill, or if he just doesn't ever read any real literature.

Worst Review Ever

[corbettw]

This has got to be the Worst Review Ever. You didn't even answer a few basic questions, like:
1) What's the plot? Is it Caroline's search for her lost humanity, or the Prime Intellect's taking control of human life?
2) What is the underlying theme of the book? It seems to be the question of what life and humanity are, but I'm only guessing.

Also, your review brings up some ideas that you fail to explain:
1) What the hell is the "Singularity"?
2) Why/How are people now immortal?

And lastly, is the book even worth reading? Does it make you question any deeply held beliefs, or provide any pure entertainment value, or both/neither?? Come on, if you're gonna take the time to write a review of a book, put in more than the publisher would on the back of the jacket!

Re:What is up with "Singularity"?

[mikedaisey]

I think it's odd that this "review" treats the word "singularity" as though the above constructed meaning is common knowledge. I knew what it meant, but it's very poor writin to assume that everyone will.

Heinlein.

[Grendel Drago]

I dunno... there's a kind of loss in not appreciating Heinlein any more because of 'maturity', the same kind of loss that makes one stop writing poetry, or stop writing a journal, or ceasing to be an activist.

I always hope I can keep a little bit of ridiculous juvenile immaturity around. 'Cause without that, we just turn into our parents.

--grendel drago

REAL explanation of the singularity

[egomaniac]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the "singularity" is. Here's the deal.

Technological advancement has been occurring at an exponential rate. It took thousands of years to advance from "banging rocks together to start fires" to "simple agriculture", but a mere 66 years to go from the Wright Brother's first airplane to landing on the moon.

This rate of progress continues to accelerate. The time between significant human advancements has decreased from thousands of years, to hundreds, to tens, to the present where we expect major advancements every year or two. Eventually that time will be compressed to months, and then days.

If this continues, then ultimately our inventions will be occurring so quickly that the time between them is mere seconds, or even milliseconds or nanoseconds. This is the "singularity", the time when the progress of human advancement reaches "essentially infinite". Theoretically, we will uncover all the secrets of the universe -- all possible technology -- in seconds.

Sound ridiculous? Each of our inventions is a stepping-stone that makes future inventions easier. A super-intelligent AI will make future inventions pretty damned easy, because it will do all of the work for us. It will figure out how to make an even smarter AI, and it will do it in record time -- and ultimately we'll have something that can solve every problem in infinitesimal time. Thus, progress will become infinitely fast.

Misuse of "literally"

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a small gripe with the reviewer's use of the word "literally" in the final paragraph:

The story heats up (literally), when Caroline decides that she wants to have a word or ten with Lawrence, so she decides to track him down. She is put into situations that only people from before the Singularity could find solutions to.

The story does not literally heat up. That would imply that the book gets hot when you finish it, or that the story itself (which exists independantly of the display medium) somehow acquires thermal properties. People misuse "literally" all the time. One of my favorite college professors nearly had a seizure every time Howard Cosell said in a sports commentary, ". . .and then he literally exploded down the field, scoring an incredible touchdown!"

Re:Asimov/Vinge fanfic?

[skeller]

I personally don't go in so much for that stuff, tho. Give me something intellectually challenging and original, as well as entertaining (and hopefully, characters with some emotional depth, and a writing style that is polished or at least not irritatingly bad).

You obviously haven't read the novel. That's okay; this is /. and it's longer than the usual articles that don't get read. But slamming the author for using ideas like the Three Laws and a singularity is completely uncalled for.

The fact is, "Metamorphasis" uses these ideas in a very interesting way. That is what the best sci-fi does. We shouldn't be concerned with every author having to come up with some brand new plot outline or technology. It's the specifics and what's done with the ideas that are most important.

Think of something like Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy. What's the new idea in there? Psychohistory? That's nothing more than a little plot-point. No, what makes that series so compelling (despite the use of hyperdrives and spaceships that were cliche even when Asimov was writing) is the characters and the intricate plotting. Likewise, "The Metamorphasis of Prime Intellect" fully considers the implications of a post-singularity artifical intelligence that is required to use the Three Laws.

What it's ultimately about is how you define humanity. What's interesting is that the story doesn't take an easy out -- the problem, as presented in the book, is very tricky. I assure you that if you read it all the way through, you will find it intellectually challenging and original, even if in summary it does not seem that way.

Re:REAL explanation of the singularity

[Interrupting Cow]

If the rate of progress is really accelerating at an "exponential rate", why haven't people gone farther than the moon in the last thirty years or so?

How do you explain the dark ages?

Re:What is up with "Singularity"?

[mcmonkey]

And leads to another issue with Vinge's 'Singularity'. Vinge quotes I.J. Good: "Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the _last_ invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. ... It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make." I'm trying not to be dismissive or simplistic, but to quote S. T. Potter, "horse feathers!"

This is a common idea in science fiction, and common mistake in conjectures such as Vinge's, that machines with human-like or super-human intelligence will have other human characteristics. D.A. makes such an assumption when Deep Thought realizes the ultimate answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything isn't useful without that actual question. In HHGG, the computer presumes to design a bigger, more powerful computer just as Good predicted. In reality, the computer will probably say, 'Here. This is what you asked for. It's your job to make it useful. My job is done. I'm off to sit on /. and grab FPs.'

What is it about humans that cause them to create? Why do they assume anything with human-like intelligence (whether natural or artificial) will have that same attribute? If human or super-human intelligence implies that drive to invent, does that imply those without such a drive are sub-human intelligent? Is the monk at peace with the surroundings equivalent to a moron?

Desire is the source of suffering.

Well, I've been reading the book...

[ites]

And here is my review:
The author has studied at the Hollywood "more blood, more guts" school of horror writing. After a few pages, one gets a feeling of numbness. Our heroine is skinned alive, raped by a zombie, shot and mutilated several times... each chapter seems to try to elevate the shock factor, but manages only to become tiresome, reflecting the heroine's own boredom with a world where the normal checks and balances of social life have been erased, and normality with it.
The basis of this novel is that a supercomputer of some kind has decided to digitise all life in the name of saving life. Fair enough, we've all wondered at some point "what if all life is digital and we just think we are alive". Many novelists have tried this route with varying success - see Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series.
What makes this story plot different is that the now-digital humans know that they are just imitations of life, and appear to take indecent pleasure in abusing that fact - killing themselves and others in the most unpleasant ways. Yes, possibly.
It is an interesting social question: what would happen if all the normal checks and balances of human life were removed? The "descent into barbarism" thesis has been tried before, in William Golding's propogandist "Lord of the Flies", which teachs young children that without the grace of adult supervision they would soon be impaling each other on sharpened sticks. In Metamorphosis, it seems, the supervising adult is quite happy to see the children impale each other.
So why does this novel leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth? It's not because of the graphic language - this just makes the reader bored. No, there is something fundamentally skewed with the thesis. Maybe it is this: human social controls are not something we dream to live without, unless we are sociopaths. They are the only measure by which we exist. This future world, in which anything goes, and no-one cares, is a distopia of massive proportions. Humanity has been reduced to something of less importance and less interest than the humans in Terminator or The Matrix. In this world, we have simply become immortal psychotic teenage males, and that is frankly horrible.