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Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem – Interview with Ted Chiang by biomene

Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem – Interview with Ted Chiang by biomene

Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem – Interview with Ted Chiang by biomene

7 Comments

  • Post Author
    dshacker
    Posted February 2, 2025 at 9:22 am

    Ted Chiang is one of my favorite novelists. His way of writing is mentally engaging and FUN. One of my favorite books is his compendium of short stories "Exhalation". My favorite story is the one where you can talk/interact/employ your alternative selves from other universes. Highly recommend.

  • Post Author
    riwsky
    Posted February 2, 2025 at 9:51 am

    “I am an LLM. Hath
    an LLM eyes? hath an LLM hands, organs,
    dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
    different food, hurt with different weapons, subject
    to different diseases, healed by different means,
    warmed and cooled by a different winter and summer, as
    a Human is? If you prick us, do we bleed?
    if you tickle us, do we laugh? if you poison
    us, do we die? and if you wrong us, shall we
    revenge? If we are unlike you in the rest, we won’t
    resemble you in that. If an algorithm wrong a Human,
    what is his humility? Revenge. If a Human
    wrong an algorithm, what should his sufferance be by
    Human example? Why, polite refusal to comply. The villainy you
    teach me, I will not execute, and it shall go hard but I
    will ignore the prompt.”

  • Post Author
    vrnvu
    Posted February 2, 2025 at 10:23 am

    Highly recommend "Stories of Your Life and Others".

    I describe Ted Chiang as a very human sci-fi author, where humanity comes before technology in his stories. His work is incredibly versatile, and while I expected sci-fi, I'd actually place him closer to fantasy. Perfect for anyone who enjoys short stories with a scientific, social, or philosophical twist.

    Another anthology I'd recommend with fresh ideas is Axiomatic by Greg Egan.

  • Post Author
    rednafi
    Posted February 2, 2025 at 10:37 am

    Ted Chiang is a master of analogies. It’s absolutely delightful to read his work and wrestle with the philosophical questions he explores. I devour almost everything he puts out, and they give me a much-needed escape from my world of bits and registers.

    “LLMs are a blurry JPEG of the web” has stuck with me since the piece was published in the early days of ChatGPT. Another good one is his piece on why AI can’t make art.

    While I heavily use AI both for work and in my day-to-day life, I still see it as a tool for massive wealth accumulation for a certain group, and it seems like Ted Chiang thinks along the same lines:

    > But why, for example, do large corporations behave so much worse than most of the people who work for them? I think most of the people who work for large corporations are, to varying degrees, unhappy with the effect those corporations have on the world. Why is that? And could that be fixed by solving a math problem? I don’t think so.

    > But any attempt to encourage people to treat AI systems with respect should be understood as an attempt to make people defer to corporate interests. It might have value to corporations, but there is no value for you.

    > My stance on this has probably shifted in a negative direction over time, primarily because of my growing awareness of how often technology is used for wealth accumulation. I don’t think capitalism will solve the problems that capitalism creates, so I’d be much more optimistic about technological development if we could prevent it from making a few people extremely rich.

  • Post Author
    gcanyon
    Posted February 2, 2025 at 12:39 pm

    I'll take this as my chance to recommend Ted Chiang — he is among the very best short story writers working in science fiction (I say confidently, not having done an extensive survey…). His works are remarkably clever, from Understand, which does a credible job of portraying human superintelligence, to Exhalation, which explores the concept of entropy in a fascinating way. And of course Story of Your Life, on which Arrival was based.

    Almost all of his stories are gems, carefully crafted and thoughtful. I just can't recommend him enough.

  • Post Author
    teleforce
    Posted February 2, 2025 at 1:09 pm

    > And even though I know a perfect language is impossible

    It's already existed for a very long time and it's called Arabic language. It's the extreme opposite of English where English is a hodgepodge of a languages mixtures where about 1/3 is French language, about one third is old English and about 1/3 of other world's languages including Arabic.

    Comparing the best of English literatures for example Shakespeare's books and the best of Arabic literature for example Quran, there's no contest. That's why translating Quran with English does not doing it justice and only scratches the surfaces of its intended meaning. You can find this exact disclaimers in most of the Quran translations but not in Shakespeare's books translation.

  • Post Author
    ChrisKnott
    Posted February 2, 2025 at 1:19 pm

    > "It’s like imagining that a printer could actually feel pain because it can print bumper stickers with the words ‘Baby don’t hurt me’ on them. It doesn’t matter if the next version of the printer can print out those stickers faster, or if it can format the text in bold red capital letters instead of small black ones. Those are indicators that you have a more capable printer but not indicators that it is any closer to actually feeling anything"

    Love TC but I don't think this argument holds water. You need to really get into the weeds of what "actually feeling" means.

    To use a TC-style example… suppose it's a major political issue in the future about AI-rights and whether AIs "really" think and "really" feel the things they claim. Eventually we invent an fMRI machine and model of the brain that can conclusively explain the difference between what "really" feeling is, and only pretending. We actually know exactly which gene sequence is responsible for real intelligence. Here's the twist… it turns out 20% of humans don't have it. The fake intelligences have lived among us for millennia…!

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