The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

So what if we humans suddenly find ourselves immortal, with the ability to have anything whatsoever that we desire other than real death?   That's essentially the basis of this book.

A super computer AI, Prime Intellect, has taken over and zapped everything into a virtual reality that is ruled over by Prime Intellect.   Prime Intellect has done this because of the three laws of robotics and it computes that the only way of preventing humans from dying, which it can't allow, is to essentially upload everything into one galactic sized cyberspace and make all humans immortal.   Within this new reality, as long as the humans don't do anything, or ask for anything, that contravenes the three laws of robotics, they can do and have anything show more they want.

Sound good?   Or does it sound like your worse nightmare?

Enter the realm of the death jockey.   People who want to ratchet up the suffering and get as close to death as Prime Intellect will allow.

Yes folks, this book is really fucking twisted.   If you've read the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy and thought some of the scenes in those books were extremely brutal and twisted, then you'll be glad to know that you can put this book on the same bookshelf right next to them.   If you haven't read them and enjoyed this book then i really suggest you do give them a go: they'll be right up your twisted alley.

I would say that, at its core, this book is a critique of the three laws of robotics, and how they may be interpreted by any AI governed by them.   The critical pieces of the jigsaw being: what the AI decides it is going to label as human, what is therefore governed by the three laws of robotics and how, therefore, it then treats everything else.

I thought the ending was really good too.

So yeah, the future is bright my friends, rush out and buy your virtual reality gear today.

Me thinks i shall be looking forward to having a read of more of Roger's books in the future if this is anything to go by. show less

What happens when people create something they cannot understand, cannot control, but something to which we give full power to control our very existence?

What happens when that same power decides that only way to keep people safe is to digitize them into VR world where anything is possible and nobody is in actual danger, and this supreme intelligence obeys everyone as long as that does not endanger humans' existence?

One need not to look far, just check what is the thing most people do with all social media and knowledge at their tips today. OF. PH. Dating applications. Only pleasure seeking - nothing substantial.

Now tell me above was something you imagined as a result of technology development. Ability to publish dozens of porn videos show more in a day? That is what it comes to?

Now add near immortality and ability to do whatever, no repercussions, You end up in never-ending orgy and perversions to the point of people just becoming vegetables with their pleasure centers constantly massaged, while they are hooked to various systems to feed them and pick up waste. And all of this is done by system that nobody knows how it works nor how stable it is, when it will run into schizophrenic situation that will break it up.

I have to agree that today it seems like people have devolved (and no, I understand culture changes, but it seems we cannot control too much change in short time period, it seems like brains just short out). I understand sexual urges, need to feel happy - but this is not point of life, and will never be. It is something to look for, something that is added value, but definitely not something to base ones life on.

So what then happens when two people meet - man, creator of this omnipotent force, and woman that was so old even before the digitization that she remembers what it actually meant to be human? Man who feels he made a mistake but he cannot change anything. Woman who, after decades of normal life, wakes up in young teen body and then spends centuries living on the edge constantly, participating in constant sexual experimentation, sick games of humiliation and deprivation, deadly and bloody games where people die [but come back from] - for only one reason. No matter the amount of sex and perversions she indulges in with rest of humanity in this VR world, she needs to feel something to feel alive. Because life in complete security, where everyone is beautiful, there is nothing to aspire to except through degradation, feels more like punishment and condemnation to Hell than true life.

For some disaster, but if you ask me exactly what needs to happen. You might call it second exodus from Eden, destruction of what at the surface looks like beautiful place but in truth is anything but. And this brings humans back to reality, and this puts us back into the great game of the nature.

There is graphic violence here, and I understand why it exists - there is no other way to show how far people will humiliate themselves or others to feel alive. Even Caroline's relations with sick people (since everyone was brought to the VR world) is because she internally has the urge to die, for her this VR world is abomination, in complete conflict with nature. For her this is walking on the edge, where she can only enjoy in her own suffering, where this even overwhelms her and satisfy her more than sexual orgasms. And she is aware of this, and seeks any possible way out.

Also there are some taboo subjects, as small society starts to grow - very same questions that everyone thought about when it comes to story of Adam and Eve (Lawrence and Caroline are just contemporary pair).

Psychologically, all characters are well written, even Prime Intellect. It is not story with happy ending, just because life is not something that comes with happy ending, especially if one looks only at themselves as something of highest priority. As they say, nobody escaped the life alive.

Only thing that seems skipped is how did Caroline acquire that much knowledge to be ready to do whatever is required when she manages to exert pressure on the Prime Intellect. This seemed a bit of too much of deus-ex-machina. But this is only element that I had issues with.

Book is warning how even with very benevolent omnipotent intelligence at the helm, result of humanity's constant search for magical leader, without taking into account all the changes this brings into play that are in contradiction with nature itself, changes introduced by rolling centuries of development into weeks or mere days, is road to Hell. We need to ask ourselves why do we need to create something that we will never understand but that is bestowed with full control over us?

I have to admit, I did not expect much from this book, so this was a very pleasant surprise.

Highly recommended. show less

We follow Lawrence, who is the leader in building a self-replicating AI named Prime Intelligence, who takes over all of known space. It almost instantaneously makes humans immortal to fulfil its hard-coded obligation not to kill humans.

The other main character, Caroline, was the first person to be made immortal after PI saw her die at 106. A few hundred years later, she is the master of “death sports”, of people designing lethal environments as adventures for each other, knowing that Prime Intellect will immediately resurrect them.

Some really interesting questions came into play. One is that people who are horrible in pre-singularity environments can work well in post-singularity. Caroline, who seemed to have been meek in her first show more life, prefers to associate with mass murderers. In this new world, they do can’t anything to others against their will, but are “interesting.”

One of those murders raises a major problem with the ethical wrongness of preserving human life at the cost of all other species (non-human animals and aliens): “My heart just isn’t in that toast any more (...) I mean, we’re amateurs against Prime Intellect. I killed six college students. It killed the whole universe.” (chapter 1)

Later comes the question of how to define humans. If someone is so altered, they only experience pure bliss all the time without change or interacting with others, are they still human?

I wish that Caroline and Lawrence’s perspectives were challenged more. I didn’t like the ending. It’s a back to nature-scenario where Caroline and Lawrence wake up naked together and immediately start to repopulate the earth, keeping knowledge of technology secret from their descendents. All the same, the story never reveals what happened to PI. I was really hoping it would undergo another metamorphosis instead of just resetting everything and retreating. But perhaps it did. I just didn’t get to know.

But according to some internet discussions, the author is working on a sequal, which would be interesting. show less

A disturbing thought experiment that paradoxically neuters itself with overtly fetishized ultraviolence and perverse sex shit. The scenario is horrific by its nature, or it would be if the torture porn wasn't constantly upstaging it.

This must be one of the most original stories I've ever read, if not the most. Which is weird, because several of its concepts are well known and far from original, and I've read about them many times. One example would be The Three Laws of Robotics. The story also deals with the old notion of a machine getting more intelligent and/or powerful than its creator, which is kind of a cliché. But Roger Williams does a very good job putting all those pieces together in a really interesting way, along with some (non gratuitous) explicit violence, gore and sex here and there. There's only so much the author can do about character development in a rather short story, and maybe that's the weakest point. Some things are a little rushed and could show more use a bit more of elaboration, but in the end, uniqueness and overall strenght trumps punctual weaknesses. show less

As a science fiction author who primarily writes about artificial intelligence, I found this book to be really fascinating.On the one hand, I need to state up front that this book has strong themes of BDSM and snuff, and it's not going to be for 80% of people. In fact, for the first half of the book, it's really unclear how it's relevant to the plot, although it does become critical later on.But the author does a great job of dealing with the practical and philosophical issues of what it means to get AI to behave ethically towards human using Asimov's three laws of robotics and what that would do to the human psyche, as well as what happens in a post-singularity world where every desire can be instantly fulfilled.If you have a deep show more interest in exploring post-singularity worlds, I would highly recommend this.I found the ending to be only partly satisfying. It's clearly a satisfying outcome for the protagonist, but she's so flawed that what passes as satisfying for her, does not for me, and probably would not for most people. Will Hertlinghttp://www.williamhertling.com show less

1.5 stars rounded up.

This has to be one of the most unsatisfying books that read which I also blew through in two sittings because, despite the torture/raping/killing of children, sadomasochist sex, and serial killer fan club up front, and the incestuous Luddite Adam and Eve story at the end, the story Keir me holding out for more.

And never delivers. Not even kinda.

This story fails 'philosophically' for a whole host of reasons, as well. Humans adapt to plenty by going of the rails... except that by the story's own light, 99.99% of people don't. Caroline is psychotic, willing to wipe out all life in the universe, permanently, in any form, to satisfy her sense of... not justice, more like vengeance. Etc, etc, etc.