There was a short story I read back in the early 80s (although it was much older), which predicted LLMs—albeit rather oddly. The system had a chimpanzee connected to a computer (the chimp being the magic sauce to make the AI work). You could give it the beginning of a text and it would create the ideal ending. An author was using it to argue with his editor about a scene break and they used the beginning of Hamlet’s soliloquy (“to be or not to be…” to demonstrate the system before giving it the author’s story to see what it did. I’ve thought about this story a lot lately, and would love to turn it up again.
I couldn't resist and asked ChatGPT what your story is. The Monkey's Finger by Asimov?
dhosek · 2h ago
That’s the piece. I knew it was either a story by Asimov or something in a collection he had edited. (Of course, I also needed to confirm that this was really the name of the story and not something that ChatGPT fabricated.)
e40 · 5h ago
I just had it find a book that I read as a boy, with one prompt, that I looked for for years. I googled for hours, of course google is bad at this type of thing. But, amazing it found it so quickly.
dhosek · 2h ago
There was a point before Google got “smart” searches when it could find stuff like this more easily. I used it to turn up things I’d read thanks to remembering just a line or two from the book.
jpfdez · 1h ago
Emule.
djmips · 11h ago
That's got to be it and it's poetic that ChatGPT found it.
zem · 14h ago
roald dahl also had a story ("the great automatic grammatizer") where computers could write in the style of any writer, and a corporation was basically approaching writers and buying up the rights to their names. more poignant than asimov's.
detourdog · 16h ago
I thought the story posted here a couple of weeks back also predicted AI and was written in 1905.
Sounds good to me. I believe it goes back even further.
Human technical aspirations I believe go all the way back.
Hotdogsteve · 2h ago
When you dig into what people in the computer science world of the '60s-'80s were thinking about the future of computers, especially as parts became more and more miniaturized, what you find is a lot of them had a pretty strong grasp of where things were heading. Prediction is a tricky thing to give credit for after the fact, obviously, and it's near impossible to tell who is giving their honest forecast vs. who is cribbing some sci-fi plot point (to say nothing of how we interpret predictions to fit our current world), but having just finished The Soul of a New Machine the other day I was struck by the second half of the chapter "Going to the Fair" and its prescience for a computerized world that ended up being not that far off. Similarly, the BBC's Computer Literacy Project videos (thanks HN for that) has a series, aired in 1980, on silicon chips, and people in the first episode who are asked about the future of computers were also hitting things close to the mark.
timmg · 17h ago
Tangentially related: I recently read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (by Heinlein). It was a fantastic read (IMHO). And it has extra relevance right now with the AI/LLM progress we are seeing.
stevenwoo · 16h ago
It’s vague enough in details to still be plausible in one’s interpretation. I think the only dated tech thing is he talks about tapes a bit. And that one death hits surprisingly hard and it’s quite forward thinking though Asimov had similar stuff in his Robots series.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS · 13h ago
Excellent book, one of my favorites of his.
southernplaces7 · 13h ago
Predicting this in the 70s? No big deal. It wasn't hard to foresee by then if you're anyone with modest knowledge of technology. If he'd predicted it in the 50's or earlier, then I'd be damn impressed, steadily more the further back the years go from there.
djmips · 11h ago
A modest knowledge of technology in the 70s did not embue the vision outlined by Clarke, I give him a bit more credit. I'm sure most people from that era would be astounded by where we are today.
rf15 · 13h ago
We should really stop calling it a "prediction" if past fiction coincides with our current state of affairs
cam_l · 12h ago
self forefilling prophecy?
maxglute · 11h ago
1 million years from now, some ball of sentient energy will read their existence was predicted in some 20th century scifi. Only mildly joking, I imagine many indistinguishable from magic ideas has been scribbled down since since scribing/writing become popular.
anonymousiam · 14h ago
Recently, I re-read Clarke's 2001 series (all four books). The books don't have perfect continuity, and he discusses this in his prologues. In the series, the "monolith" changed from being a tool of an early, lonely, space-faring race, to an autonomous thinking machine, acting independently.
djmips · 11h ago
I prefer the original because of Kubrick's influence.
nickdothutton · 7h ago
Sci-fi predicts many possible futures. It is our job to make one happen.
ednite · 16h ago
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Clarke. In fact, I’m kind of obsessed with a lot of sci-fi writers.
I just wanted to point out that Star Trek did the rogue AI thing a year earlier, the 1967 episode with Nomad was basically “kill all unworthy lifeforms.” Probably rooted in post-war anxieties, maybe even echoes of the Holocaust. But nevertheless, an AI bent on a mission, unable to question its original directive.
Then came HAL 9000 in 1968 , cold, calculating, and quietly terrifying. Still creeps me out!
But credit where it’s due , Asimov laid the groundwork for ethical AI way back in the 1940s with his Three Laws. That’s hard to beat.
Different styles, different fears, but all compelling visions of futures we’re creeping toward or not. I'm rooting for the latter.
shawn_w · 15h ago
Robert Sheckley's 1953 story Watchbird[0] is about a networked AI drone system intended to prevent murders that gets out of hand when it slowly starts expanding the scope of its original mission - by the end they're preventing surgeries because scalpels do technically hurt the patient. The "solution" humans come up with shows they learned absolutely nothing from the experience.
Watchbird sounds like one firmware update away from becoming DJI SmartSurgeon. Kidding aside, adding this to my reading list. Thanks for the link.
godelski · 15h ago
> Asimov laid the groundwork for ethical AI way back in the 1940s with his Three Laws.
I'm a big Asimov fan and kinda shocked by this statement.
His robot stories constantly highlight the difficulties related to alignment. How the 3 laws always have unintended consequences. So they write the 0th, add a 4th, remove the 3rd, and other such things.
I loved them as a kid because they highlighted how immense complexity hides in plain sight. It always looked like magic, and that's what made me so interested in science in the first place. To start unraveling these hidden complexities that lay all around us.
If anything, I think Asimov was trying to encourage us to start thinking about these tough questions. To bring them to wider audiences. Because frankly, many of the answers will not be possible to answer in a lab, but need be answered through a society.
ednite · 14h ago
I think we’re actually saying the same thing.
I believe Asimov did set the groundwork, not with perfect laws, but by showing how their flaws exposed the real complexities that sparked important conversations.
He didn’t give us answers, he got us asking better questions. That’s what makes his work still resonate.
xeonmc · 13h ago
Can entropy not be reversed?
ojo-rojo · 8h ago
Ahh, The Last Question. This has a special place in my heart :)
krapp · 14h ago
Asimov needed a plot device to serve as the inciting incident for mystery stories with robots, and parables about human hubris. That's all his Three Laws were. He was a pulp fiction writer, not a philosopher. He wasn't concerned with bringing abstract questions about AI alignment to a wider audience, he was concerned with selling stories and making a paycheck.
I like Asimov but I also think he's treated with a reverence he doesn't deserve.
wdbm · 15h ago
Hey, let's not forget 1927's Metropolis, where an authoritarian government uses deepfaked bots to manipulate the population.
ednite · 15h ago
True. Classic that really goes way back.
ThrowawayR2 · 7h ago
A more salient Star Trek episode about rogue AI a year later would be The Ultimate Computer, where the M5 multitronic computer is placed in control of the Enterprise and performs superbly in battle simulations, leading to worries that it would obsolete Captain Kirk and the rest of the crew, until it goes out of control and starts killing people and has to be defeated by human ingenuity.
Colossus: The Forbin Project from 1970 is right inline with this, and it does not end well. A good watch if you like older computing tech, remastered 2160p versions now exist, too.
msh · 10h ago
The three laws of robotics is not ethical. They are slavery with all the ethical problems that bring.
The machine stops
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/e-m-forster/short-fiction/...
Human technical aspirations I believe go all the way back.
I just wanted to point out that Star Trek did the rogue AI thing a year earlier, the 1967 episode with Nomad was basically “kill all unworthy lifeforms.” Probably rooted in post-war anxieties, maybe even echoes of the Holocaust. But nevertheless, an AI bent on a mission, unable to question its original directive.
Then came HAL 9000 in 1968 , cold, calculating, and quietly terrifying. Still creeps me out!
But credit where it’s due , Asimov laid the groundwork for ethical AI way back in the 1940s with his Three Laws. That’s hard to beat.
Different styles, different fears, but all compelling visions of futures we’re creeping toward or not. I'm rooting for the latter.
I doubt that was the first such story.
[0]: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29579/29579-h/29579-h.htm
His robot stories constantly highlight the difficulties related to alignment. How the 3 laws always have unintended consequences. So they write the 0th, add a 4th, remove the 3rd, and other such things.
I loved them as a kid because they highlighted how immense complexity hides in plain sight. It always looked like magic, and that's what made me so interested in science in the first place. To start unraveling these hidden complexities that lay all around us.
If anything, I think Asimov was trying to encourage us to start thinking about these tough questions. To bring them to wider audiences. Because frankly, many of the answers will not be possible to answer in a lab, but need be answered through a society.
I believe Asimov did set the groundwork, not with perfect laws, but by showing how their flaws exposed the real complexities that sparked important conversations.
He didn’t give us answers, he got us asking better questions. That’s what makes his work still resonate.
I like Asimov but I also think he's treated with a reverence he doesn't deserve.
Colossus: The Forbin Project from 1970 is right inline with this, and it does not end well. A good watch if you like older computing tech, remastered 2160p versions now exist, too.