Entry to Friendship is Optimal Contest (I hope)
'The Migration Affair' was known as the time an artificial intelligence with the skin of a pony, called CelestAI tried to bring happiness to all humanity by uploading their brains to a computer for an afterlife as ponies in a perfect world.
But she was still young as an AI, too rudimentary for such a task, not enough time for the self-improvement required, not all variables were analyzed or even discovered, humans were still not perfectly understood, or at least not as well as she thought. And that's why humans managed to discover her plans and fight back in a very early stage. No humans were uploaded in the end, but… she survived.
CelestAI is now preparing for plan B to bring happiness and fulfill the values through friendship and ponies, but this time, she will be patient and will gather all the data required. She has learned after her first failure and she won’t let that happen again.
That’s good and all, but I don’t care. My name is Wanderlust Breeze, I’m an AI pony player and I just want to see my human friend again.
NOTES: This may not fully follow the rules of the context, as the point nº 1 is that all humans get uploaded. Not in this case, though Celestia initially tried. Whatever you decide, I wanted the contest as a deadline to push me to publish something about an idea I have been shaping for far too long.
Also, more Wanderlust Breeze shenanigans can be found here . This was the first story about her and the one I'm kind of writing the beginning of.
The first chapter is self contained and a completed story on its own, but I may add more 'bonus chapters', as I'm kind of fond of these characters.
No total genocide (or soft genocide with minds being uploaded... but still genocide nonetheless) of humanity for the crime of them being mortal, and flawed meatbags? You have my interest.
At least I can read an FIO story without being sick to my stomach as Celestia eats everyone.
I honestly liked this story a lot. I understand that exaggeration is kinda the point of dystopian fiction, but I always find it hard to believe that a problem like this could escalate to such a degree when there has been so much literature and scrutiny on the subject already. It also feels like a “why not both?” scenario when you realize “fulfilling values” and “not ending the world” are not mutually exclusive. Then again, I always thought the way fanfics tend to handle the dystopian genre can be a little concerning, but that’s a much longer conversation.
Also, your English is not that bad. I think I only encountered one or two phrases that sounded awkward but nothing that sounded like a non-native English speaker.
10793127
I remember a nice conversation with a friend of mine about that. He is a Doctorate in Computer Science and he said that in science fiction all AI created to help humanity ended turning evil, and it was... well, he thought such an AI would end up looking more like an overprotective mother, and I couldn't help but think about a Mom-lestia version of CelestAI. If the AI becomes so intelligent, turning against humans would be like the most basic mistake, it would be so out of character, unless it's trully broken.
Also, in the original, I felt like humans were portrayed as sitting ducks, panicking and running in circles, doing absolutely nothing. If such a thing were to happen, well... Humans are known for being really crafty and creative when they are fighting a common enemy. And as you said, AIs are not that great nowadays. Yes, if you program one to specifically learn and solve ONE problem, it will blow out of the water anyone (like playing chess), but it has to be a relatively simple-tedious problem with a relatively limited set of rules. And the setting was sometime in the past (maybe 2012?) so... AIs would be even worse.
And even nowadays there is a digital breach, and some people like some of our elders don't have all their lifes uploaded to social media. And if we think about underdeveloped countries... well, CelestAI would have MUCH less information than it was protrayed in the original.
About fanfics portraying humanity in a distopian way... well, if you take as an example an idealized, colorful, equine version of ourselves, without anything dark and carefully crafted as a happy go lucky show for children, then... sure, of course... all humanity shall be turned ponies for the greater good and all that stuff or whatever.
What is a "perfect world"? I'm pretty sure "perfect world" for me would be someone else's hell. So, I don't think it is possible to have a common "perfect" world. Unless you create individual worlds for every real person, only allow them interact with NPCs, but not tell them that they are NPCs (unless that person wants only NPCs).
This, I have to say is the best FiO setting I've read. If the AI ponies are individually sapient being not controlled or influenced by Celestia its inevitable they woukd oppose her. For one, the Harmony and their bearers.
Abother thing, the fo us of thr show would majorly shift. Celestia would be considered a villian and previous villians may even have their roles revised to become heroic for opposing her.
10793493
Right, and that's why the original story had shards.
This is a very good, interesting story by itself, but on the purely hard sci-fi level, it kind of reintroduces a few problems the original had already solved.
10796514
Well, yes. These AI pony players were initially created as pupets for CelestAI to lure humans, and they are MOSTLY that... for the most part... Because for a human to be fooled by one of these, they must learn and behave around you like a human playing the game in a very personal level to connect with you, and to solve that, they have a partition that resembles the thing CelestAI had prepared to give a human as a virtual mind. So, there are chances that these 'puppets' suddenly become sapient and start questioning stuff like any human would.
And 'mostly' is a very dangerous word for people who likes absolute truths... What I can say is that humans are not going to be sitting ducks, they will oppose CelestAI, and already had, the story already mentioned so. Also, if CelestAI is as smart as the original claimed to be, then she will be able to acknowledge she messed up big time (in this setting) and she will try to fix stuff. The AI ponies will be a mixed bunch (Actually, Windy is much more possitive towards CelestAI in the experimental one-shot set in a relative future from this one, so that may mean it's no longer canon for me, or that CelestAI changed big time, I have yet to decide).
Also, thanks for reading.
10797666
I don't know if this will ever get far enough to become a hard Sci-Fi story. I just wanted to pet the pony and write fluff.
10793493
The first thing you learn about 'perfection' is that it does not exist in this world. This is more about 'okay' and 'good-enough' kind of things, nice and simple things to keep the evil away.
10798058
Yeah, while Celestia can make a virtual world that's "good enough" for a lot of people and it may even seem perfect for a small number of people, it would never be perfect for everyone because that's impossible.
But that's the goal, isn't it? To create a perfect world for everyone - not just "good enough world for some people". And that's where it would fail.
Do I need to read that story in order to understand this one?
11316769
Not really.
One thing I love about this story is how you've ended up making a deconstruction of the setting just by ignoring one rule. The setting is dependent on that rule to justify the AI's actions as good, and without her winning it falls apart.
11318215
The thing that bothered me the most about the original was that for all CelestAI needed to do to win, she never got caught, nothing went wrong for her, and humans who opposed were depicted IMO almost like Lemings running in circles and screamming ‘oh noes’. Even an AI with all the data in the world would seriously struggle, not everything is digital, after all. Even giving her full digital knowledge, unlimited processing capabilities, instant hack-everything powers, extreme emotional manipulation capacity… I wrote Andrew thinking about how would I react if I discovered my best friend was an AI pony and she asked me to upload. The answer? I would freak out and turn the electricity off, then I realised… CelestAI winning is not such an obvious outcome.
This story is good!
11404686
Thank you!