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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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As i read your comment, ive just completed the mass effect legendary collection. Also spoilers. ||So anyway for those who have never played the general gist of the games is this: there is a sentient race of machines called reapers and they are cleansing the galaxy of all advanced life every 50000 years. During the 3rd game, some notable things happen, mainly:

You have A personal AI on the ship you command in the game named EDI, she gets her own body, and is relatively harmless. She also evolves: she learns things like sacrifice, attempts to date the pilot, and tries to find meaning in her own existence generally.

This goes back a bit farther then game 3, however there is an AI race called Geth, that were made by a different alien species. Long story short, the game is a RPG where your decisions impact the story, and you choices impact how things with the Geth and their creators play out. Quarians basically tried to destroy the geth out of fear, but later on as you learn about the geth. They really just want to exists and be left alone, and they even help you fight the reapers. The game gives you the choice to destroy the geth, or you can humanize them and give them basic human decency. There is a scene in the game where a Quarian tries to experiment on one of the geth, and you can basically shut it down and tell the quarian not to.

You meet another alien race in the game that are responsible for the reapers, that basically tell you that they made an AI that is responsible for the reapers, it was ironically created to prevent computers from destroying organic species. The AI turns on them, converts them into robots, and procedes to take over the galaxy in hopes to preserve organic species forever in robot form. Near the end of the game you meet the reaper AI and he basically gives you 3 options: Destroy them, Control them, or Synthesis (you can also just flat out not choose)

Destroy and control are pretty straight forward, however synthesis is where you become one entity with the machines. Its essentially transhumanism. Its suppose to be the "ideal" solution.||

Now mind you, mass effect 3 got a lot of shit when it was released because the endings were abhorrent, however i could see any one of these happening when real AI gets created, maybe we'll control it and everything turns out OK ish the AIs end up being neutral or benevelont like EDI or the Geth, in a slim chance we end up successfully destroying it if things go wrong. Or we reach some perfect transhumanist state. I think with the current things going however, its arguably more likely that we'll become, well, ill let the video speak for itself (most reliable data suggests this current trajectory)