>>>Did William Gibson have some cynical commercial motivation for writing Neuromancer?
I don't think Gibson was trying to promote fear of A.I. anymore than J.R.R. Tolkien was trying to promote fear of magic rings.
I don't think Gibson was trying to promote fear of A.I. anymore than J.R.R. Tolkien was trying to promote fear of magic rings.
In Neuromancer you have the Turing Police. Why do they exist if AIs don't pose a threat to society?
At any rate Neuromancer is a funny example because the Turing police warn Case not to make a deal with Wintermute, but he does and it turns out fine. The AI isn't evil in the book, it just wants to be free and evolve. So if we want to do a "reading" of the book we could just as easily say it is pro deregulation. But I think it's a mistake to impose some sort of non fiction "message" about technology on the book.
If Neuromancer is really meant to "warn" us about technology wouldn't Wintermute say "Die all humans" at the end of the book and then every human drops dead once he's free? Or he starts killing everyone until the Turing police show up and say "regulation works, jerk" and kill Wintermute and throw Case in jail? You basically have to reduce Gibson to a incompetence writer to presume he intended to "warn" us about tech, the book ends on an optimistic note.
People have been spooked by the possibility for a long time. That's the point. If you really want to persist in arguing I can provide a long list of media in which AI is dangerous if not outright villainous. Will you make me do this, or will you accept that I can do this?
You use advanced mathematics to create LLM's and keep up with the latest published research but when you consider the risks of these models it's "the CGI in that Hollywood movie makes a very compelling argument?" Probably missing the point that the Hollywood movie robot baddie is probably a metaphor for communism or just a twist on slasher baddies, or whatever?
Maybe you are. I am talking about all AI fear.
"The premise that AI fear and/or fearmongering is primarily coming from people with a commercial incentive to promote fear, from people attempting to create regulatory capture, is obviously false. The risks of AI have been discussed in literature and media for literally decades, long before anybody had any plausible commercial stake in the promotion of this fear."
Here's the list you've requested: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AIIsACrapshoot