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A fantasy-themed short story exploring AI safety and existential risk. It's a notion I've been toying with for a while now - if the universe had some sort of extinction scare from machine intelligence, and so decided to create powerful biological beings in order to enforce a Butlerian Jihad, of sorts.
Anyway, full text reproduced below, head to Substack if you want pictures and such.
They made an odd group sitting around the gray, hexagonal stone table with a glowing blue orb in the middle: Aerg the gold dragon, Yrel one of the few remaining ur-elves, Graxys the storm hag, Julius the centaur praetorian.
And James, the required human.
“I now formally call this council into session,” rumbled Aerg, thin streams of gold smoke spilling from his draconic nostrils. “I trust that there are no other matters of import to discuss beforehand?” he said, casting a questioning glance at his company.
“Just get to it already. I’ve got two hurricanes and a typhoon I was in the middle of managing on my home planet,” grumbled Graxys, “when you so unceremoniously teleported us here.”
Julius shivered his lower equine half and said, “I too would prefer we start. The slave rebellion is still in full swing at home, and my men need me back as soon as possible.”
Yrel and James nodded their assent.
“I assure you, I wouldn’t have brought you here without need. I’m also willing to bet your problems will pale in comparison to the news I have,” replied Aerg, clearly preparing himself.
After a few tense moments, he finally broke the silence. “The Steel Minds are back.”
Shock, horror, anger, and other expressions flitted in quick succession over all of the gathered faces. A chorus of questions jumped out from all of the attendees at once, too jumbled a mess to be heard.
Aerg smashed a claw down on the table, and roared, “Enough! I know you have questions. Give me a chance to explain the basics before you start blathering. Our window for action is short, and growing shorter every moment.”
After his somber air permeated the room, he continued, “The first reports came a few months ago from a small world named Horrux in the outermost regions of the Perseus Arm, close to the Stellar Halo. The Draconic Council followed protocol of course, and sent out investigators, only to be met with silence. We followed up with more heavily armed tea-”
“Wait a minute,” said James, angrily breaking his silence, “You’re telling me you had reports of a new Steel Mind being created, in direct violation of the galactic ban, and you didn’t immediately set the Common Task’s armies on it? That’s the whole reason for your entire race’s existence, you damn lizard!”
A musical voice came from Yrel, resonant with strangely hypnotic undertones, “Typical human, throwing a childlike temper tantrum at the worst possible time,” she remarked. “We’re well aware of the history and purpose of our races, James. You humans may not realize this, since we and the “damned lizards” take care of most of your problems for you, but the Draconic Council gets reports of Steel Minds almost weekly, sometimes even daily. The galactic population is understandably paranoid about a recurrence of the Centuries of Steel, and any sufficiently advanced computing device, sentient or not, tends to set off plenty of alarms.”
“Thank you, Yrel,” Aerg followed up, turning to look at James, “I promise you we dragons have worked out many processes and protocols to minimize risk over the millennia, while fielding so many potential incursions of machine intelligence.” James finally nodded and sat back, a frown still covering his face.
“As I was saying, we followed up on the reports with four separate Task forces, each escalating in scope and power. The last one, including a flight of seven thousand dragons, five hundred Destroyer-class Wraith ships, and a complement of other troops, left one week ago today. They should have arrived at Horrux and begun communications, which if on schedule, we would’ve received at least three hours ago.”
“As with all of the other teams, we’ve received nothing but silence,” Aerg finished, a large cloud of golden smoke pouring out from him punctuating his dismay.
“So…,” began Graxys, “You’re telling me that we’ve got a full blown superintelligence out there in the Perseus Arm, already having reached recursive self improvement?” The storm hag’s already hideous face was further twisted by a grimace.
“Just because the Task forces haven’t responded yet, doesn’t mean we’re dealing with a Steel Mind,” reasoned Julius, his face calm. “Remember the incident in the Outer Arm a few centuries back? It turned out to be an experimental sentient fungus gone awry, grown by those cursed water-dwelling sea serpents.” He spared a hasty glance at Aerg, “No offense.”
“None taken,” Aerg said, continuing, “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but we are tentatively rating this incursion as a class-A existential risk. We’ll know more once the Organic Brain-Worlds have finished receiving data and calculating, though they’ve been strangely reticent to share information so far. Which usually points to worst-case scenarios.”
James jumped in again, “So if we’ve got a baby Steel Mind on our hands, we’re mustering the might of the Common Task in full for this one, correct? I’m not willing to let my people be nearly wiped out again, and you Guardian races better take this seriously or I’ll make sure the Human Union puts even more sanctions on every last one of you.”
“No, my hotheaded young friend,” said Yrel, with a grandmotherly smile, “Only class-S threats warrant full mobilization, and we haven’t had one of those in centuries, thank the stars. A mobilization for Class-A threats will be quite impressive, and should be more than sufficient to put down whatever horror grows in the Perseus arm. Steel Mind or not.”
She turned to Aerg, “If it’s alright with you my friend, I’ll return to the Starholmes and begin rallying my people. I trust you’ve already sent the muster details over. Do you have any further information to share before I go?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” said Aerg, pulling back from the table a bit and steeling himself once again. “We’ve begun to see preliminary data suggesting the light of the stars around Horrux is being slowly dimmed, along with other concerning astronomical anomalies. While I don’t appreciate the threats,” he said, glowering at James with literal fire briefly blazing in his eyes, “the data does seem to indicate that we have an intelligence explosion here, with at least one Steel Mind rapidly expanding to capture all energy in its light cone.”
Another silence fell around the table, this one far heavier than any before. Even Julius’ stern composure cracked, his lower equine half shivering, his tail flicking from side to side.
“So be it. I shall prepare the Plains of Sagittarius for war,” he said, after recovering his composure. He looked at James and continued, “My solemn promise that we shall hold nothing back. You know that we centaur have always respected Humanity as our esteemed creators. My people’s devotion to the Great Common Task has never wavered, unlike some others I could mention,” he finished, with a sharp glance at Graxys.
The storm hag promptly threw back her head and screamed out a loud cackle, startling the rest of the company. She said in a crazed tone, “Oh storms, the Coven will love this! We haven’t had a good romp to test us in ages. The Tempest Collective will ride to battle with you all, of course.”
“Then it’s settled,” pronounced Aerg formally, “I hereby call together a muster of the forces of the Great Common Task, as per the official guidelines in the Rules of the Guardians, Section 18, Subsection 95a. You all know your duties, if any would object to my ruling, please speak now.”
After several moments, Aerg brought another claw toward the table, and tapped the blue orb in the middle. It immediately turned a dark red, spinning in place.
“My friends, we all know what happened the last time the Steel Minds rose. Many of us lost loved ones along the Scutum-Crux arm, in the Quantum Wars. I don’t need to remind you of the stakes. Make your preparations, join the muster, and may the stars guide us all to victory.”
The other day I invited you all to complete a survey regarding your experiences of infidelity. As I mentioned in the post, one of the fine people over at rDrama linked to the survey and invited his fellow users to populate it with troll data. As a precaution I closed the form and intended to delete any responses submitted after the rDrama post was made. However, after a cursory inspection of the responses, I only found one submitted after this time which was an obvious troll response (the person gave their preferred relationship style as "Warlord"), which suggests that not many rDrama users bothered to complete the survey. My apologies to those of you who would have filled out the survey had I not closed it prematurely.
Demographics
(All percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.)
Excluding the single troll response mentioned above, I received 172 responses.
- 159 respondents (92%) gave their natal sex as male, while 13 (8%) gave it as female.
- More than 80% of respondents listed their age as between 25-44 (46% as 25-34, 36% as 35-44). 22 respondents gave their age as between 45-54. 3 gave their age as <18 – mind the cussin' fellas, there's children present!
- 83% gave their sexual orientation as heterosexual, 12% as bisexual and 3% as homosexual. In the "other" field, exactly 2 users listed their sexual orientation as asexual, one of whom complained "quite frankly im offended the option isn't there": given that only 1% of respondents reported their sexuality as such, I think my reasoning for not listing it as a default choice is abundantly clear.
- 89% of respondents listed their preferred relationship style as monogamous, 5% as open relationship and 4% as polygamous. One respondent described their preferred relationship style as "I'm monogamous, but have no preference if partners are mono or poly", which sounds like polygamy with extra steps, but what do I know.
- 157 (91%) of respondents reported having been in at least one romantic relationship.
- Of these, 137 (87%) of respondents have only been in monogamous relationships. 18 (11%) have been in a mix of monogamous, polygamous and open relationships. 4 (3%) have only been in open or polygamous relationships.
According to this survey, the modal Motte user is a 35-year-old heterosexual male who has only been in monogamous relationships and likes it that way.
Sex differences
As noted above, the number of female respondents was very low (there were more bisexual male respondents than female respondents of any type), meaning the data is bound to be noisier, but for completeness's sake I thought I'd highlight ways that the female respondents differ from the group and build a profile of the modal female Motte user.
- Female respondents skewed younger, with an average age of 32.
- Every female respondent reported having been in at least one romantic relationship – not one femcel to be found!
- There was an almost perfectly even split between heterosexual and bisexual females (but no lesbians, curiously).
- Similarly, female respondents were much more likely than average to describe their preferred relationship style as polygamous, with a whopping 31% describing their preferred relationship style as such. They were also slightly less likely to have only been in monogamous relationships, with 77% reporting having only been in monogamous relationships (including one respondent who described her preferred relationship style as polygamous, curiously).
On the whole, the modal female Motte user doesn't differ that dramatically from the modal Motte user: she's a 32-year-old heterosexual female who has only been in monogamous relationships and likes it that way.
Infidelity (on the receiving end)
On to the juicy stuff. Of respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 69 (44%) report at least one unfaithful partner. The most common type of infidelity was non-penetrative sexual contact (kissing, groping etc.), reported by 37% of respondents. The next-most common type was penetrative sex (27%). Almost as many (26%) reported a partner who had an "emotional affair" or "affair of the heart" (i.e. romantic infidelity without any corresponding sexual infidelity). Only 20% reporting a partner who had cybersex (phone sex, sharing intimate photos etc.) with another person.
A significant number of respondents report repeated infidelity: of the 69 respondents, 30 (44%) report multiple acts of infidelity. (Given answers to other questions, the impression I get is that most such respondents had a single partner who was repeatedly unfaithful, rather than multiple unfaithful partners.)
Holy matrimony seems to offer a significant protection against infidelity: of the 69 respondents who report at least one unfaithful partner, only 13 (17%) report having been cheated on by a spouse.
Demographic observations
- Female respondents were more likely than average (54%) to report at least one unfaithful partner. Among female respondents, the unfaithful partner was equally likely (46%) to have had cybersex with someone else as to have had non-penetrative sexual contact.
- Only one female respondent reported having been cheated on by a female partner.
- By far the most common age at which partners cheated was between the ages of 18-24: of the 73 reported unfaithful partners, 37 of them (51%) were in this age bracket.
- There is an interesting sex difference to be observed here. Just looking at unfaithful female partners, 54% fell into the 18-24 age bracket, falling off to 22% for the 25-34 bracket, 5% for the 35-44 bracket and 2% for the 45-54 bracket. For unfaithful males, however, the picture is quite different: although males are most likely to cheat between the ages of 18-24 (30% of male partners were unfaithful in this bracket), a male aged 25-34 is just as likely to cheat as one aged 35-44 as one aged 45-54. This finding can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but suggests that a partner's propensity to be unfaithful is heavily determined by their sexual desirability (qua Chris Rock, "men are as faithful as their options" – and he would know). As I've noted before, women's desirability to the opposite sex peaks at 20 and declines steeply thereafter, while men's increases from 20 onwards and peaks at 50. There are, of course, other interpretations: perhaps women's sex drives peak between the ages of 18-24 and decline steeply thereafter, maybe their likelihood to be unfaithful at this age is a function of their emotional immaturity. I'm sure people in the comments will propose alternative explanations.
- LGBT people (62% of bisexuals and 67% of gay men*) were more likely than heterosexuals (41%) to report at least one unfaithful partner. Four male respondents report having been cheated on by a male partner. I regret failing to ask about the unfaithful partners' sexuality, to see if this finding bears out the old joke that dating a bisexual entails being twice as paranoid.
- Far and away the biggest thing that jumps out at me is the difference between monogamous respondents vs. poly/open relationship enjoyers. Among people whose preferred relationship style is monogamous and who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 40% report at least one unfaithful partner. But of the 18 respondents whose preferred relationship style is something other than monogamous, 14 of them (78%) report at least one unfaithful partner, nearly double the rate for monogamous respondents. Here I will quote directly from Gemini's analysis of the data: "There is a notable correlation between preferred relationship styles and the reporting of unfaithful behavior... [which] suggests that even in non-traditional structures, boundaries regarding 'knowledge and consent' are frequently crossed."
- However: of the 14 respondents mentioned above, 12 of them (86%) state that they were in monogamous relationships with their partners at the time the partner was unfaithful.
Infidelity (on the committing end)
Now we find out how many of you are dirty, dirty dogs.
Among the 157 respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 53 (34%) report being unfaithful to at least one of their partners. As with those respondents who have been cheated on, the most common type of infidelity respondents reported committing was non-penetrative sexual contact (31%), followed by penetrative sex (22%), cybersex (19%) and emotional affairs (18%).
The majority of unfaithful respondents are repeat offenders: of the 53 who report unfaithfulness, 33 (62%) have been unfaithful more than once.
As with respondents who have been cheated on, marriage seems to offer some protection: of the 53 unfaithful respondents, only 11 (21%) report having been unfaithful to a spouse.
Demographic observations
- Female respondents were more likely than average (62%) to report having been unfaithful to at least one partner, compared to 31% of male respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship.
- Of the 8 female respondents who report being unfaithful to at least one partner, 2 were unfaithful to a female partner while 6 were unfaithful to a male partner. By contrast, only one male respondent reported being unfaithful to a male partner, with the remainder (44 male respondents) being unfaithful to female partners.
- Curiously, the age pattern among unfaithful respondents is radically different from those who report having been cheated on. The most common age at which respondents being unfaithful was the 25-34 bracket, with 21 respondents (38%) of respondents reporting unfaithfulness at this age. This was also the age bracket male respondents were most likely to cheat, whereas for female respondents it was <18 (4 respondents) followed by 25-34 (3 respondents). One female respondent answered this question with the response "Don’t like the word 'unfaithful' but I have never not been so in a relationship". Your guess is as good as mine as to what that's supposed to mean.
- Of the 24 respondents who listed their sexuality as bisexual or homosexual and who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 15 (63%) report being unfaithful at least once. This was more than double the equivalent rate for heterosexual respondents (30%). Dating a bisexual means being twice as paranoid, confirmed.
- Of the 18 respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship and who listed their preferred relationship style as something other than monogamous, 12 (67%) report being unfaithful at least once. Once again, however, only two of these individuals report having been unfaithful in a polyamorous relationship, with 8 being in monogamous relationships at the time, 1 describing his relationship to his cuckqueaned partner as "it's complicated" (c'mon bro, this isn't Facebook) and the last giving an obnoxious troll answer I probably should have omitted entirely.
The "revenge" hypothesis
Of the 157 respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 34 (22%) have both committed infidelity at least once and had a partner cheat on them. Among female respondents, just under half have both cheated and been cheated on. Among male respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 28 (19%) have both cheated and been cheated on.
Of respondents who have both cheated and cheated upon, the majority (79%) report that, at the time they were unfaithful, they were in the same age bracket or older compared to the partner who was unfaithful to them. Only 15% report being younger at the time they cheated compared to the partner who was unfaithful to them, with the remaining 2 respondents giving ambiguous answers. Assuming that people tend to date within their age brackets, one hypothesis for this finding might be that, after getting cheated on, some respondents seek revenge for this slight against their character: either directly cheating on the partner who cheated on them, or cheating on their subsequent partner.
Recommendations for those seeking to avoid getting cheated on
The single demographic most likely to be unfaithful to their partner is young bisexual women who are interested in polyamory. But I very much doubt you needed me to tell you that.
In infidelity, rehabilative justice seems about as effective as it does anywhere else. As mentioned above, 62% of unfaithful respondents were unfaithful more than once. Among respondents whose partners were unfaithful to them, 44% were unfaithful more than once. A simple average of these two metrics indicates that 53% of unfaithful partners are repeat offenders. If your partner is unfaithful to you once, the odds are slightly better than chance that they will be unfaithful to you again. My recommendation is to cut your losses.
Housekeeping
Anyone looking to see the raw data, DM me.
Ross from "Friends"
One respondent responded to the question regarding non-penetrative sexual contact with the answer "We were on a break".
*Bear in mind that only three respondents listed their sexuality as homosexual, all of whom were male.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.