Thanks for the recommendation David. It seems a pretty prescient book
without too much technofuture paraphernalia. Also, to keep my
vaccination against Apparent Intelligence hype I have in my radar The
Empire of AI, by Karen Hao:
https://karendhao.com
Cheers,
Offray
On 21/05/26 16:28, David Szent-Györgyi wrote:
On Wednesday, May 13, 2026 at 6:50:42 PM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote:
Just my two cents on my position about all this "agentic
programming fashionware", I don't want to delegate big parts of my
understanding of complex systems, including software, to
non-deterministic systems that "hallucinate" in non detectable
ways. I try to confine the stuff I don't understand about the
software artifacts I build to small parts, where I ask specific
questions to the AI (or Apparent Intelligence, as I like to call
it) and do small commits.
I keep my tokens usage small, use anonymous AI systems like
duck.ai <http://duck.ai> or Lumo, that don't use my data for
training and I think that in all that rush of AI, seems a
minimalist approach with little compromise.
I doubtful and worried of a grandiloquent visions with a
unique convergent future for diverse people and worldviews,
particularly when it comes from tech bros. Unfortunately "agentic
programming" seems one of such visions.
A friend just returned a book that I loaned her before the COVID-19
pandemic upended so much of civic life: /Stand on Zanzibar/, by John
Brunner. Seeing it brought to mind one of Brunner's creations for the
book: Shalmaneser, a supercomputer that does work that greatly
benefits giant corporations. The Wikipedia article on the book
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar> mentions published
praise of the novel:
In his 2021 book /Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe/, historian Niall
Ferguson lauds /Stand on Zanzibar/for foreseeing the future better
than more popular novels such as /Fahrenheit 451/, /The Handmaid's
Tale/and /Anthem/.
[Wikipedia article quotation of Ferguson begins]
*Yet, on further reflection, none of these authors truly foresaw all
the peculiarities of our networked world, which has puzzlingly
combined a rising speed and penetration of consumer information
technology with a slackening of progress in other areas, such as
nuclear energy, and a woeful degeneration of governance. The real
prophets turn out, on closer inspection, to be less familiar
figures—for example, John Brunner, whose /Stand on Zanzibar/ (1968) is
set in 2010, at a time when population pressure has led to widening
social divisions and political extremism. Despite the threat of
terrorism, U.S. corporations like General Technics are booming, thanks
to a supercomputer named Shalmaneser. China is America's new rival.
Europe has united. Brunner also foresees affirmative action, genetic
engineering, Viagra, Detroit's collapse, satellite TV, in-flight
video, gay marriage, laser printing, electric cars, the
de-criminalization of marijuana, and the decline of tobacco. There is
even a progressive president (albeit of Beninia, not America) named
"Obomi".
*[End of quotation]
I recommend reading /Stand on Zanzibar/, it is an astonishing
experiment in form, written to immerse the reader rather than argue in
a manner suited to debate - it introduces the technique used ("The
Innis Mode") as a necessity of urgency. . . . which is sobering to the
reader approaching it in 2026, since it was published in 1968. In
addition to the other forecasts made in the novel, Shalmaneser is sure
to strike the current reader as a single Artificial Intelligence.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "leo-editor" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/leo-editor/c6172cc5-5b91-4e8e-a2e3-fac9679cd0d2n%40googlegroups.com
<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/leo-editor/c6172cc5-5b91-4e8e-a2e3-fac9679cd0d2n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"leo-editor" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To view this discussion visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/leo-editor/9dd7dbab-a0b4-4832-b581-49e8ccbf91d7%40riseup.net.
