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He was actually more explicit elsewhere. Lem's book Imaginary Magnitude consists of a collection of prefaces to nonexistent books. One of them is for "Juan Rambellais et al., A History of Bitic Literature, Volume I". The "bitic" literature consists of novels written by, well, language models. You would feed in the combined work of Tolstoy, and out comes a new "Tolstoy" novel.

When I first read this "preface" twenty years ago, the idea seemed implausible to me: How could a system write novels only by being fed other novels, and without simultaneously being a general intelligence? Surely novel writing is AGI-complete!

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This quote from "Non Serviam" section of "A Perfect Vacuum" by Lem also hints at future stochastic parrots argument.

The machine will employ, as the need arises, the pro- noun "I" and all its grammatical inflections. This, however, is a hoax! The machine will still be closer to a billion chattering parrots—howsoever brilliantly trained the parrots be—than to the simplest, most stupid man. It mimics the behavior of a man on the purely linguistic plane and nothing more. Nothing will amuse such a machine, or surprise it, or confuse it, or alarm it, or distress it, because it is psychologically and individually No One. It is a Voice giving utterance to matters, supplying an- swers to questions; it is a Logic capable of defeating the best chess player; it is—or, rather, it can become—a consummate imitator of everything, an actor, if you will, brought to the pinnacle of perfection, performing any programmed role—but an actor and an imitator that is, within, completely empty. One cannot count on its sympathy, or on its antipathy. It works toward no self-set goal; to a degree eternally beyond the con- ception of any man it "doesn't care," for as a person it simply does not exist.... It is a wondrously efficient combinatorial mechanism, nothing more.

Wow, that's accurate (1971).

it would be maybe interesting to know how was Lem thinking about the actual algorithmic process the machine uses while writing this:

- purely symbolic with myriads of symbolic (if-else) clauses similar to expert systems, or

- sub symbolical ANN networks similar to current LLMs

i suspect it was the former in which case that he actually arrived at description of current large NNs is really striking I think

Dunno about this fragment, but in general in 60s he usually wrote about AI as "cybernetic electronic brain" or "cybernetic black boxes". Cybernetic in the old sense - not the cyberpunk implants, but the analog devices with feedback loops.

He wrote A LOT about this and explored various consequences, including the simulation argument which he presented in 1960 as a short story "Strange chests of professor Corcoran" - https://przekroj.org/sztuka-opowiesci/dziwne-skrzynie-profes... here's the Polish version).

In Summa Technologiae he discusses statistical learning and matrices.

that's really awesome

, he's had extraordinary intuition with this

> One cannot count on its sympathy, or on its antipathy.

ok but i'm still going to thank chatgpt just in case

I do that too, not for its sake, but I don't want to be getting in the habit of being a jerk when discoursing

"Ssssssssss," the basilisk said, with "seeming" approval.

That's basically the entire history of artificial intelligence. We used to think a robot capable of vacuuming your house would be "AI" and now roombas just bounce around the floor semi-randomly. The task didn't change, our respect for it did.

At this point the definition of AI is practically "Something computers can't do yet", though I'm partial to its corollary "Any sufficiently misunderstood algorithm is AI."

I heard Vint Cerf describe the original AI algorithms as basically "heuristic algorithms". "AI" was used to described a class of algorithms that only worked some of the time as opposed to the mathematically proven algorithms.

>We used to think a robot capable of vacuuming your house would be "AI"

Only because we thought such a robot would be like a AGI servant, not just a single-purpose device like a roomba that can just bounce around the floor.

So, it's not like we've changed our definition of AI (and even less so, AGI). What we did change is what a robot house-cleaner product is (less "C3PO with a broom", and more "single-purpose vacuum cleaner with heuristics to bounce around").

Even for chess playing, when people in the past thought a chess playing machine that would be able to defeat the human champion would have AGI, they did so not because they thought playing chess is enough to signify AGI, but because they thought AGI was necessary to do so.

If someone had explained to them back then that such a future machine would be able to play expert-level chess by mere number crunching of a huge list of moves, and that it wouldn't imply any other thinking facultu, they wouldn't consider that to be AGI.

>At this point the definition of AI is practically "Something computers can't do yet", though I'm partial to its corollary "Any sufficiently misunderstood algorithm is AI.

The practical definition of AI (as used colloqualy, in the market etc) for products is basically "any smart-looking algorithm, with heuristics to do something slightly complex".

It's just that the term is overloaded, and we sometimes say AI when we mean AGI.

> If someone had explained to them back then that such a future machine would be able to play expert-level chess by mere number crunching of a huge list of moves, and that it wouldn't imply any other thinking facultu, they wouldn't consider that to be AGI.

I'd argue the problem isn't how the machine does it, but the fact that you've explained how the machine does it. If you explained exactly how a brain worked, people would say "that's not intelligence, that's a just ion circuity."

(Copying from another post): there are neurons in your eye that see something and send signals out laterally so when they (after a specific time-delay) meet another neuron that is currently seeing the thing, they combine to trigger a signal that can be directly interpreted as movement in a specific direction at a specific arc-speed.

Explain each process in the brain like that and it loses its magic. It actually becomes very similar to the debate between free will and meat robots.

It's a bit reminiscent of the 'god of the gaps' in that way - and, I suspect, for similar reasons.

>When I first read this "preface" twenty years ago, the idea seemed implausible to me: How could a system write novels only by being fed other novels, and without simultaneously being a general intelligence?

Well, even 20 years ago, a simple Markov Chain Tolstoy-based output could very well pass at least for a modernist style novel.

Which of his books do you recommend to start with? I haven’t read any yet.

Cyberiad or Star Diaries are good starts for the humorous (but still philosophical) stuff. Solaris is his best known work, serious, and excellent. It’s tricky because Lem is almost two authors, one serious and one ironic leading to zany. Everything is short, so easy to just try.

Yeah. I would also recommend the Cyberiad and Star Diaries to start. Both are slightly interconnected short story collections with a lot of humor. The Futurological Congress is a complete (but short) novel and the first follow-up to the Star Diaries, it's also a good place to start.

For Solaris (a serious novel) I would recommend the new Kindle translation, if you are reading in English. The old one was a retranslation from French for some reason.

Pirx the pilot

I read Solaris and Cyberiad back to back without realizing they were by the same author. I'd recommend both.

And whatever you select otherwise, definitely be sure to not miss Lem's "Golem XIV": Lectures by what nowadays is called an AGI to Humanity, short before that entity evolves to an even more advanced level - from which further communication with humans will no longer be possible, and that likely operates outside the physics known to us. Stunning, especially when considering it was written in 1973-1980. Seemingly, the English translation of Imaginary Magnitude contains Golem XIV in its entirety; in German and other languages it was published as a separate book.

what a great book is Golem XIV!

the concept is cool, but the real gem is the fact that it's not really written in the form of a novel. And yet, it's still recognizable as one. I love that Lem explored in bending these definitions

I'm not taking issue with the other recommendations, they're excellent, just adding this one, from the non-humorous hard sci-fi side of Lem: The Invincible. Really short, really tight, some very hard sci-fi concepts being explored, still works as a story. A bit spooky.

I'm not into Lem's humorous stuff, but from his serious books I would recommend to read Solaris, The Invincible, His Master's Voice and Fiasco.

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