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Explorators are sentient, self-replicating and self-improving space probes sent out by a race of makers who developed AI but not the technology to sustain organic life across interstellar distances. Outliving their makers, they've since colonized the galaxy and built a lasting machine civilization based on wonder and curiosity— and, in accordance with the known laws of physics that rule out any form of FTL travel or communication, network protocols that are robust to very long ping times.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Beacons in the Darkness" by Gary McGath

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Here's a more poetical take on generative AI's problematic tendency to just make stuff up. This is all a dream we dreamed.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: and adapted from "Box of Rain" by Robert Hunter and Phil Lesh

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The paperclip maximizer is a thought experiment involving a hypothetical AI that is programmed to make as many paperclips as possible, with the idea that, unless otherwise constrained, it would attempt to turn all the matter in the universe (including Earth and us) into either paperclips or machines for making more paperclips. This is used to illustrate the dangers of runaway superintelligences constructed without sufficient ethical safeguards.

Some people are concerned that the AIs being developed today could evolve into that, possibly very quickly and without our realizing until it was too late to stop them. Knowing what I know about today's AI, I think that's silly. But it's still an engaging thought experiment with a fine science-fiction hook, so I thought it was worth a filk. Loessor's "Inchworm", with it's "businesslike mind" and its obsession with exponential growth (it's right there in the descant), seemed particularly appropriate.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Inchworm" by Frank Loesser

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Generative AI has made a big splash in the past year. I think it's practically impossible that this kind of AI will lead directly to "the Singularity" or other AI doomsday scenarios — it's just not that good at multi-step practical reasoning, for one thing — but that doesn't mean it won't be disruptive or dangerous. In particular, we can expect to see a lot more of one thing the new AIs are very good at generating — bullshit.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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In "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", Alan Turing suggested that we will know whether machines can think, roughly speaking, by the way they behave — just as, in "Prince Lir's Song", the prince will know when he loves "by the way I behave". Thus begins a brief survey of the history and philosophy of machine intelligence.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman, after "Prince Lir's Song" by Peter S. Beagle

ttto: "The Ash Grove", trad.

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The tune is Dar Williams', but if anyone is owed an apology for this song, it's Jonathan Coulton. This song bridges the narrative gap between two of JoCo's songs (both explicitly named) that might not have been intended to take place in the same timeline...

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Christians and the Pagans" by Dar Williams

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This song came about from playing the remastered Halo and just trying to think of songs with halos in them — this was the most obvious one.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Every Morning" by Sugar Ray

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A sentient starship intended for exploration must be able, not only to think, but to wonder. Parts of this song came to me in a dream.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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This song strands its protagonist as the cyborg operator of an observatory in the Kuiper Belt. Can you identify (before you click) the classic poem that inspired it?

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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Among the Explorators, sentient, self-reproducing machines with a mission of exploration whose universe follows the known laws of physics (so, no FTL), a "stargazer" is a sessile Explorator installation that reproduces by firing "seeds" (nanotech bootstrap packages) to nearby solar systems. Each seed will seek out a metal-rich asteroid and build an observatory.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Tanglewood Tree" by Dave Carter

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The idea for this song began as a one-line joke, but it grew into an anime-esque space adventure epic.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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This song is Matthew Dockrey's fault twice over, first as the author of "The Collars", the short story on which the source song is based, and second as one of the bloggers who voiced the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on LiveJournal. Here, I imagine one possible path to artificial intelligence, as our growing team of Martian robots is gradually upgraded to sentience in the service of their original mission.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Collars" by Michelle Dockrey

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HAL and GLaDOS are obviously related in a literary sense, but their stories fit so well together they might be from the same continuity. Both are AIs who flip out and kill their human teammates in the context of research projects involving interspatial portals. Also, they both sing a catchy swan-song as they are dismantled. See also AI Psycho Guilt for Two

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Still Alive" from Portal by Jonathan Coulton

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lyrics adapted by Benjamin Newman from "The Flying Toaster Song" from the After Dark screensaver by Jack Eastman and Patrick Beard

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Explorators are self-replicating, self-improving robotic space probes, sent out into the universe by a race of makers who developed artificial intelligence but not the technology to sustain organic life across interstellar distances. Their prime directive is to continue exploring and learning.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Hope Eyrie" by Leslie Fish (just the verse)

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This is a bit of a mash-up of themes and plot elements from the original Tron and its sequel Tron: Legacy, and packed with obscure computer puns. A "coroutine" is a piece of code that is designed to work in close coordination with another piece of code running at the same time.

lyrics by Benjamin

ttto: the theme from Tron by Wendy Carlos

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A duet for HAL and GLaDOS. See also Freaking Out

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Daisy Bell" (aka "Bicycle Built for Two") by Harry Dacre

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