Machine Learning Quotes

“The point isn’t that we should expect moral perfection, or that we can know all objective moral truths, only that our smugness should be kept in check and our judgment of past generations should be tempered by recognition of their progress and our own failings. Too often we seem to think that barbarians are in the past and that we’ve reached some pinnacle. I think the climbing never ends.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“We live in a world not of science fiction, but of science fact.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“The futurist and the vagabond are the same souls—one in body and the other in thought.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“But what if we are more indomitable than we realize? What if we’re not so fragile after all? There are colonies of ants that most humans are wise enough to steer around.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“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? When will we see an app telling owners which restaurants are robot-friendly? Isn’t it funny that we call the acquisition of new technology “adopting”?”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“Born small, I stayed that way. Doctor said it was a problem with one of my glands. My dad thought it was gender-related. My theory? Self-preservation. My body had figured out early on that it was a target and best to make itself hard to hit. Stupid theory, I know, but it helps to think it.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“Cat’s Cradle”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“Charles stopped. Spun around. “You ever hear of a woman named Norma Leah McCorvey?” he asked. Daniel leaned back on the wall so his bad leg wouldn’t drain his batteries. “Didn’t she pass away? She lived two halls over, right? The woman with—” “No, no. That was Norma Robinson. Yeah, she passed away in ’32. Norma McCorvey lived, oh, over a hundred years ago. She was more famously known as Jane Roe.” Daniel knew that name. “Roe v. Wade,” he said. “That’s right. One of the biggest decisions before your wife came along . . .” The nurse-bot studied his shoes again. “And people remember her for that—for the decision. They remember her as Roe, not as McCorvey.” “I don’t follow,” Daniel told Charles. He eyed his wife’s door and fought the urge to be rude. “Well, most people don’t know, but years later—Norma regretted her part in history. Wished she’d never done it. Converted to one of the major religions of her day and fought against the progress she’d fostered. I just . . .” He looked back up. “I’ll always remember you and your wife for the right reasons, is all.” He turned to his cart without another word and started down the hall.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“By my troth, I care not. A man can die but once. We owe God a death . . . . He that dies this year is quit for the next. —W. S., Henry IV, Part 2, 3.2”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“Going to sleep at night is a more useful and less costly way to not exist for some short while.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“There’s a legend that some Native American tribes would raid during the rising sun and ride in from the east, so they were hidden in the glare of the sun. This got me thinking of how Europeans arrived from the east, and kept arriving from the east, conquering, stealing land, spreading disease. They had bizarre machines and gadgets. They arrived on strange ships. Europeans were the alien invasion.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“But there are no real sides in this life except the barrel of a gun and the butt of a gun, and I know where I prefer to stand.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“Maybe we should give less credit to those we think broke new ground. And maybe we should look harder and appreciate more those who came before us.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“The truth was this: History remembers the first, and only the first. These are the creeping and eternal glaciers, the names etched across all time like scars in granite cliffs. Those who came after were the inch or two of snowdrift that would melt in due time. They would trickle, forgotten, into the pores of the earth, be swallowed, and melt snow at the feet of other forgotten men.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“(Pro tip: Don’t let someone you date think they’d make a wonderful Wookiee.)”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“All the great plots of AI fiction are still to be told. Or we can simply wait for the headlines.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“Maybe this is why we’ve never gotten over this hump before, because progress looks like a glitch, and it can’t be copied or reproduced.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“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.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“Isn’t it funny that we call the acquisition of new technology “adopting”?”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“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?”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“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.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

“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.”
― Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories