Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

The last thing I want to do is lend any credence to the prequel novels...but. I've been reading Erewhon, the book by Samuel Butler that inspired the idea of the Buterlian Jihad, and got to the section where it finally goes into the history of how that society turned against machine development, and the argument given is specifically that machine consciousness is the threat to humanity to watch out for. Whereas it took biological life millions of years to develop into what it is, and for consciousness to emerge, machine advancement is much quicker, and potentially accelerates rather than slowing down. It doesn't quite state the idea of the omega point, but it comes close to implying it, i.e. that a time will come when machine advancement could suddenly leap forward of its own accord. It even suggests that the machines of 'today' (which in the book's case were somewhat futuristic compared to when the book was written) may have a sort of primitive consciousness already, since if we look at primitive life forms we can hardly ascribe consciousness to them, and yet the current level of consciousness did emerge from them. Or, on the other hand, if primitive forms don't have consciousness, then it implies that conscious beings can emerge out of non-conscience forms, as humans from mollusks, and that the current form of machines doesn't speak to what might come next. Either way, the ultimate threat to humanity is the conscious machine, or possibly even the more-than-conscious machine. This last concept antitipates FH's Destination: Void in a big way, and perhaps the Hyperion series as well.

Given how influential this work appears to have been in FH's mind, and since the arafel Leto II refers to appears to be self-adapting Ixian hunter-seekers, it seems to me only a minor step to say that these were intelligent machines. Maybe not intelligent in exactly the same way humans are intelligent, but about to reproduce, adapt, change themselves, and pursue their goals and needs to the utmost of their abilities. Artificial life, in the most important of senses. So why should we avoid saying that AI was to be the doom of humanity? Where things get messy is to suppose that this is precisely what was happening pre-Jihad, and that this threat already existed. I don't think it did, because otherwise it would have been no surprise to anyone to hear that all of humanity could be threatened from a single source. The threat of AI-advancement would no doubt have been well understood well before the Jihad. And it seems that it took until sometime during Leto II's reign for this technology to even become possible. But even if the Golden Path would prevent all of humanity falling victim to a single attack, it doesn't mean that the threat of AI would be completely neutralized. The Ixian arafel could still run amok and do a lot of damage, decimating at least most of the known universe.

Another interesting feature in Leto II's end is his marriage with Hwi, the Ixian ambassador. Yes, they engineered her for him. But at the same time, the notion that he found it inevitable to marry himself to the ambassador of the machines seems to point to something, something not yet explored even by the end of CH:D. Erewhon focuses heavily on man's relationship to machines, and how the two need each other and serve each other. Stop caring for the machines, and you stop being able to feed humanity, travel, etc. Advancing tech is necessary to advance humanity, and even in GEoD the Ixian naviagation machine is crucial for Leto II's plans to come to fruition. This interdependence with machines seems very important in GEoD, and it not quite revisited until maybe CH:D, when we see Duncan able to have some sort of connection with machines that is yet to be explained. This is one more piece of evidence that leads me to believe that there was definitely going to be a Dune 7 coming. Now I don't see much reason to believe that M&D were AI beings, but perhaps FH was pointing to the idea that at a certain point of advancement it might be hard to distinguish between biological beings and machines, being 'natural intelligence' and artificial intelligence. As an analogy, we already see that the Face-Dancers cease at a certain point to mimic the identity of a person, and actually fully take on the persona of a person. This gray line between mimicry and actually being the thing may have its analogue in human intelligence and machine intelligence coming to be more and more similar over time, and man and machine grow more complex together.

The key in all this would seem to prevent humanity being prematurely wiped out by machines, before it's possible to come to some sort of equilibrium or harmony with them that would no longer shut down man's need to think.

Interesting. I always thought that the major discrepancy between natural intelligence and artificial intelligence is that the latter evolves/improves much faster. Biological evolution takes a lot of time when compared to technological advancement.

But that could be an assumption. Artificial evolution is faster because is focuses on improving a few key aspects while biological organisms are much more complex, with many facets and interdependencies. But if artificial organisms become as complex as the biological ones, it's possible that their evolution would slow down dramatically.

Returning to the title of your topic, I would say that the golden path is saving humanity from itself, because it does seem to have a tendency to devour itself, like a kind of an ouroboros.

BTW, I must confess that I never understood what arafel is. Leto said that Ixians could no longer use it, although they could build machines. To me, that implies that arafel is not refering to hunter seekers or machines in general but to something else. Perhaps I'm wrong.

And I definitely don't buy the whole terminator style conflict between humans and AI, as presented in the expanded books. I don't consider them canonical.

I believe that Leto's warning to Hwi, and the vision Siona saw during Leto's test was the extinction of humankind that he prevented. It sounds like AI to me:

"The lxians contemplated making a weapon-a type of hunter-seeker, self-propelled
death with a machine mind. It was to be designed as a self improving thing which
would seek out life and reduce that life to its inorganic matter."
~GEoD

Yes, this does sound like AI. So, this extinction caused by those hunter seekers is arafel? Or, in other words, is arafel just another name for extinction of humanity?

Then I guess that the only way to prevent this is to spread humanity as much as possible so that it's not possible to hunt down every individual. I.e, the Scattering.

Because it is inevitable that AI will be created and used again after a long time of prohibition. You cannot prohibit something ad infinitum.

But all of this seems to me like a trope - creation turning against its creator(s) is an old tale, perhaps as old as humanity itself. I wonder if there are other possible paths with AI, other than this trope.

DragEgusku wrote: ↑18 Jan 2025 10:16 But all of this seems to me like a trope - creation turning against its creator(s) is an old tale, perhaps as old as humanity itself. I wonder if there are other possible paths with AI, other than this trope.

It's not entirely clear to me that this is the trope FH is using. Certainly he's saying that an AI-driven extinction can happen and that it has to be guarded against, but I'm not sure that's all he's talking about in Dune. If you look to Erewhon, the chapter about machine intelligence talks about the interdependence that arises between men and machines, and how they sustain and serve each other. FH may have been going in the direction that even after the AI-extinction threat is dealt with, there's still the issue of what sort of relationship humans and AI can have. The Matrix deals with this question, and although many people hated the 2nd and 3rd films they do mostly focus on this issue. I think if you look at the Pandora series in a certain way you might also see it pointing to a joining point between the 'natural' and the 'artificial'.

You might be right that the distinction between natural and artificial can become blurry after after a long time of co-existence and development.

But then how would you reconcile that with what GEoD says, that there is a fundamental difference between an unbroken continuum vs serial bits?

To me, this quote implies that humans and machines can interact but they cannot mix, that there will always be a difference.

Of course, a possibility could be that you can try to create a machine that is based on an unbroken continuum, not serial bits - but such a machine would not be a machine, not an AI, but a being, according to GEoD.

And aren't Tleilaxu doing exactly this, creating beings such as Face-Dancers? Perhaps that is why Daniel and Marty are implied to be (enhanced) Face Dancers, they're a culmination of the efforts to create continuum-based "machines". And, imho, Dune implies that the human potential is greater than AI's potential.

But of course that is just my opinion.

Good questions. I do think 'biological machines' have been long in the making in Dune, e.g. dogchairs, but also with Tleilaxu biotech. But there's also a strange dovetail in the reverse direction, where the final Duncan is a biological being whose 'self' consists of serial memories and lives. So maybe a bridge is being built between robotic and biologic through the series. But even if serial/organic is a hard divide, as you mention that doesn't stop the inquiry into how these two different types of 'beings' would interact and feed each other.

I personally don't see a good reason why organic beings would be 'superior' in a technical sense, if we're sticking to just 'who can do what'. What the KH/oracle can do is based on physics, and what can be done in physics can no doubt be done a number of ways. Already we see the INM able to do what Guild Navigators can do, and if we're being careful about this that probably means more than just charting paths through space. Humans do seem to have an innate advantage built-in, fueled by the drugs, but that doesn't mean tech can't catch up or even exceed it in terms of pure capabilities.

In fact, it's interesting that an effect (invisibility to prescience) was achieved in two ways: one biological (Siona gene) and one technological (the no-room tech). But are they equivalent?

Similarly, are the INM and a Navigator equivalent to each other?

I'm curious what would the answer be. And there are cyborgs but they're not machines but beings with some unnatural additions.

I believe the vision Siona has during her test in GEoD was a possible past that Leto prevented. A kind of self-improving hunter-seeker with a machine mind. I suppose you could call that AI. But he didn't seem to be against the Ixian Navigation Machine, I can't imagine how you do that without AI and be strictly mechanical. I guess he was just against it's misuse?

Freakzilla wrote: ↑26 Apr 2025 12:31 I believe the vision Siona has during her test in GEoD was a possible past that Leto prevented. A kind of self-improving hunter-seeker with a machine mind. I suppose you could call that AI. But he didn't seem to be against the Ixian Navigation Machine, I can't imagine how you do that without AI and be strictly mechanical. I guess he was just against it's misuse?

I think the INM and the Siona gene needed to be in place before the Scattering. That was the long and short of his timetable, which is why the AI hunter-seekers couldn't be allowed out of the gate until this happened. I doubt he thought he could prevent the invention of such a thing forever, so his only hope was that it would be released too late to be able to ever find all of humanity. For all we know this thing did finally come around and is the 'great enemy' we hear talk of at the end of the series.