Kind of really disagree with this video 😕
I’ve only read the first two Dune novels, and that awhile ago, so I’m poorly equipped to have this conversation, but the video focuses on the idea that fascists are perpetuating it to keep powerful tools of liberation out of the hands of the proletariat. You wouldn’t agree with a fascist, would you? While there may be some truth to this, it completely ignores the cause of the BJ to begin with. It was in fact a rebellion by the people against those tools.
Even taken at face value, the video seems to posit that because the fascists can’t be trusted, AI is indeed a powerful tool for liberation. I don’t see that as the case. It hardly needs to be said, but Dune is a sci-fi novel, the context of which does not currently apply to our real world circumstances. AI is the tool of the fascists, used for oppression. I don’t think it can simply be repurposed for liberation, that’s a naive interpretation that ignores all of the actual ways in which the current implementations of AI work.
Disgusting AI-generated add for merch halfway through.
Five@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
The speed of technological progress tends toward an exponential curve, and Frank Herbert understood and new this, but wanted to write a serious medieval saga set in the distant future. The Butlerian Jihad was always a plot contrivance to explain why in the thousands of years of intergalactic civilization, human life is still recognizable to us, and still recognizable from their in-story ancestors.
But just because AI was treated as an enemy by fictional fascists, doesn’t mean it was good. Fascists are enemies to other fascists. It’s an ideology that is always seeking enemies, and will either invade outwards or purge inwards - but their enemies don’t need to be ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ they only need to be ‘other.’
It can both be true that a technocratic class using thinking machines would have dominated the human race, and the force that prevented their rule is a theofascist eugenic autocracy. The theme Herbert I think would have appreciated his readers noticing is that there is no real difference between a crushing totalitarian dictatorship under an inhuman technocratic class, and a crushing totalitarian dictatorship under a charismatic leader and a religious cult.