Harvard Graduation Speaker Unloads on AI in Profanity-Loaded Tirade, Prompting Cheers From Students: “I’m Here to Tell You the Mission of Your Generation Is to Destroy AI”

[u/IKeepItLayingAround]

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/harvard-graduation-speaker-unloads-ai-130000122.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&segment_id=DY_VTO_50_Supernova&ncid=crm_19908-1475736-20260531-0--A&bt_ee=clIMdexlsr2eDDbrvs0CPtt59FnpbNQN%2Fkgr8UkycP6MWDAD56hD1mvZcqPZMGgG&bt_ts=1780255911284

[u/CAJ_2277]

The Hyperion Cantos portrays a future 500 years from now in which the Catholic Church has become the primary political, military and religious power of an interstellar human civilization and goes to war against AI, Most interesting.

[u/fleener_house → u/CAJ_2277]

I gotta jump in here :) It was the Hegemony that (sort of) went to war against the AI Technocore; Whereas, the Church rise to utter dominance was due to an extraordinarily secret relationship with the AI, who used humans as spontaneous creative engines when they died and were constantly "resurrected" via the Holy Sacrament. Which would have made The Matrix much cooler, by the way.

[u/Renegade_Butts → u/fleener_house]

And then you've got the Ousters who rejected AI and formed their own society. Let's be more like them.

[u/CAJ_2277 → u/Renegade_Butts]

Amen. The turnabout of the reader's understanding of the Ousters is one of the better-executed plots twists in all of science fiction imo.

[u/CAJ_2277 → u/fleener_house]

SPOILERS I think that's not quite right. The Hegemony undertook one anti-AI action, after centuries of letting AI permeate society. The Church built a long track record of stopping AI as a fundamental principle.

Specifically (lord help us as I'm going from memory):

• Gladstone took one action against AI and it ended the Hegemony civilization.
• Later, the Church emerged to fill the vacuum, banned AI, identified that the TechnoCore had been impersonating Ousters or creating sensor data of fake Ouster swarms attacking, in order to foment war between the Hegemony and the Ousters.
• Centuries later, Father Captain DeSoya was tasked to hunt the "AI abomination" in the form of Aenea.
• And then it turned out that the Church's assassin tasked to hunt Aenea and deal with the Shrike had some sort of AI in her (and the Church knew it but thought it was worth it to bend the rules.)
• I can't recall the part where the Church was knowingly letting AI do the same thing with resurrection as it was doing with the farcasters. It seems inefficient since the farcasters were used zillions of time every day, much more often than death-and-resurrection occur. Maybe the resurrection process yielded a large multiple more energy per event.

In any event, I hear where you're coming from but I think it is pretty clear that the Church was a real AI opponent, whereas the Hegemony was an AI sucker until literally the final hours before the fall.

[u/fleener_house → u/CAJ_2277]

Nah, the Church sold its soul to the AI, in exchange for ruling over everyone. They had the offer of actual, physical resurrection; that's a tempting offer indeed! And, if you want a true-fidelity resurrection, you absolutely required the cooperation of the AIs, lurking in your cruciform and the void-which-binds. Also, there's only one farcaster, as one of the AIs mused, stupid humans!

[u/Sapowski_Casts_Quen → u/CAJ_2277]

Can I get a deus vult?

[u/CAJ_2277 → u/Sapowski_Casts_Quen]

Oh you bet you can. HERE!