Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

by Hugh Howey

The same people who crossed seas in bygone eras, or rode wagons out west, or put men on the moon are now dreaming about humanity on Mars and beyond.

Is it possible to doubt where we might go, seeing how far we’ve come? We do the impossible daily. We are creeping ever toward that unreachable horizon. I wonder what we’ll find when we get there.

The parts of our brains wired for kids were long ago appropriated by dogs and cats to win them scraps. How long before our machines prey on the same weaknesses?

Isn’t it funny that we call the acquisition of new technology “adopting”?

What we keep doing is moving the goalposts. Once we understand how AI does something, it’s no longer as magical as our own consciousness, and so we dismiss it as progress.