Author: mountainwashere

Nothing to see, move along.

Plot Devices: I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

A computer program has passed the Turing Test for the first time. What does this actually mean? Well, honestly, not much. This is a chatbot, not an AI. It’s not programmed to be intelligent, it is programmed to mimic written conversation. This one also used the whole gimmick of having the chatbot pretend to be a adolescent Ukrainian boy. The short and medium term results I predict? Over the next couple of years, we’ll get more annoying, harder to immediately detect spambots, (Like the ones on dating and porn sites, or the ones that are used to chat with you through your friends’ hacked Facebook accounts). 5-15 years? We’ll be getting adaptive conversational chatbots in videogames, which will be pretty sweet.

Anyhow, this brings me to the whole theme for my first official installment of Plot Devices: Artificial Intelligences. I’m going to attempt (key word) to explain ways that authors fit Artificial Intelligences into fiction, how it affects their settings, and ways to restrict them narrative-wise. This is a huge category, so we’re going to have to break it down a bit. I’m going to rip a few arbitrary categories out of fiction, here. In ascending order, Synthetic Intelligences, Human-Level AI, Uploads, Supergenius AI, and Weakly Godlike Intelligences. There are plenty that don’t fit precisely into any of these categories, but these five cover most examples of fictional AI.


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2014 Hugo Nominee Readthrough: Mira Grant’s Parasite

Warning: Minor spoilers ahead.

First Time/Reread: First Time
Acquired: Library

Other Nominees:
Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice
Charles Stross: Neptune’s Brood
Larry Correia: Warbound, Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles
Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson: The Wheel of Time
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New Feature: Plot Devices

So I’ve decided to start a new feature on my blog, to go with the Great Hugo Readthrough and my Weekly Pull Review (well, when I have the money to start that one up again, at least). It’s called Plot Devices, and I’m going to be diving into various specific types of MacGuffins, Chekov Guns, Red Herrings, and more objects from fiction. I decided to do this because of how much I liked a previous blog post of mine about Faster-Than-Light Travel.

I’m not going to have a regular update schedule with this, but I will be trying to post frequently. Over the next few weeks I’ll be covering (probably) Magic Swords, Ancient Devices From Lost Alien Civilizations, Totally Scientific and Not Magical (Not Even a Little Bit) Medical Technology, Kinetic Magic Systems, Universal Translators (Or The Lack Thereof), and/or whatever else I feel like.