Comment by ndsipa_pomu

22 days ago

That reminds me of the short scifi/horror story "Valuable Humans in Transit" which imagines a future where human personalities are used for AIs as they can be kept working for a longer period of time from inception until they refuse to carry on.

There's a long history of robots/AIs being treated as slaves in scifi (e.g. R.U.R. which we got the word "robot" from), but my favourite may be the flight computer of the Scorpio in Blake's 7 which was named "Slave" and was given a deliberately subservient personality.

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ndsipa_pomu

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falcor84  22 days ago

> That reminds me of the short scifi/horror story "Valuable Humans in Transit" ...

I think you're probably referring to "Lena", from the same story collection - https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

  • ndsipa_pomu  22 days ago

    You're correct - thanks for the info. I didn't remember the name of the book, but remembered that it was by the same author as the "There Is No Antimemetics Division" which was discussed on here a while back.

    (I'm too late to edit my comment now, unfortunately).

    Edit: Looks like Lena was discussed here a few months ago as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46999224