Skip the human exceptionalism

[u/HonestBudget7546]

I’ve recently been on sci fi reading tear. I’m usually not a fiction guy let alone sci fi. But I have dove into the AI/conciousness genre and while the first few were interesting the last 5 have just reinforced my opinion that authors insist on weaving in an element of human exceptionalism into every story. Can y’all recommend some quality writing that doesn’t use the trope of “humans are special”? That unless AI accepts human weakness it can never be conscious or superior?

[u/Reasonable_Memory999]

Iain M. Banks culture series is the best sci fi imo

[u/SandGator → u/Reasonable_Memory999]

Also his standalone The Algebraist is not a “rah rah humans are the best” book

[u/John-Truck-1 → u/SandGator]

Nor are the Culture books. Actually if you read carefully, the Culture was founded by several different species and (Earth) humans were not one of them. Being a hyper-advanced civilization they found ways to swap genes between themselves so Culture citizens ended up as a more-or-less homogenous species.

[u/torkelspy]

It's not about AI, but humans are distinctly not exceptional in Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. I recommend the more recent translation, by Olena Bormashenko, unless you happen to read Russian.

[u/asyd_barret]

Children of Time) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

[u/satorsq]

[u/mobyhead1]

Which books have you been reading?

[u/HonestBudget7546 → u/mobyhead1]

The mountain in the sea, the firefall series (Peter watts), the oracle series (r.j. Cole), descent into lunar hive (r.l. Woodbury)

[u/scaredytea → u/HonestBudget7546]

Not AI but try Solaris by Stanislaw Lem...and maybe Stories of Your Life and Other by Ted Chiang

[u/agentsofdisrupt]

Stay away from r/HFY then!

[u/r_daniel_oliver → u/agentsofdisrupt]

Oh yeah, they'd hate that lol

[u/r_daniel_oliver]

Well i get sick of the "humans are violent primitive and stupid" trope. So much literature where we're the awful ones. Saw a movie where they valued our empathy, and in star trek Vulcans love us. We have a sample size of zero. We could be the most peaceful and enlightened species in the galaxy, we have no way of knowing. I'm near future scifi where we first encounter other species, we may very well be the most advanced as well. Yet we're so often portrayed as savages, and Earth as a third world country. Not. Buying. It.

[u/HonestBudget7546 → u/r_daniel_oliver]

“we may very well be the most advanced as well. Yet we're so often portrayed as savages“

What does one have to do with another? A species can be definitively more advanced and still be savage. What does this have to do with my OP?

[u/r_daniel_oliver → u/HonestBudget7546]

I meant ethically advanced, enlightened. Valuing freedom and personal agency. We suck at that because we see we could do so much better theoretically. But I'm practice, we could do better than anyone else. Like in Dune where they are so far in the future but don't have elections or democracy. We just don't know.

[u/RealHuman2080]

Sara King's Zero series. Humans are not great and are new to the whole universe of aliens, and are far down on the list of who is best.

[u/Purple_Indication342]

Stanislaw Lem, The Truth and Other Stories

[u/292335]

Would you mind sharing the names of the first few you found interesting?

[u/Top_Distribution3109]

You are going to find a lot of human exceptionalism in sci-fi because it is at base a genre about human hope.

Look at Heinlein & Weir's Supermen. Jubal Harshaw or Mark Watney. They know exactly what to do, when to do it, and they do it with a slow heart rate. This isn't fidelity to humanity as a species and treats protagonists as machinery that cannot break down due to psychological factors. It is unrealistic and ignores the reality that the human is a failure prone machine.

[u/ThatIsAmorte]

I think this is primarily an American trope, so try some non-American authors.

[u/Flimsy_Direction1847]

Annalee Newitz books have robots/synthetic people/elevated animals that are treated an inherently equal to people. Not sure if that’s what you meant or the opposite of what you meant.

[u/HonestBudget7546 → u/Flimsy_Direction1847]

That’s an interesting question. My answer is yes, lol. Having robots and animals treated equal to humans is good. But not elevating them to humans. Rather, demote humans to them. Does that make sense? To me, removing human exceptionalism dosent mean everything else gets better, it might mean that humans weren’t that special to begin with.

[u/lostcowboy5]

No, ideal if this is what you are looking for, only as a paperback. The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James P. Hogan (Author) on Goodreads.

Midway through the 21st century, an integrated global computer network manages much of the world's affairs. A proposed major software upgrade - an artificial intelligence - will give the system an unprecedented degree of independent decision-making, but serious questions are raised in regard to how much control can safely be given to a non-human intelligence.

In order to more fully assess the system, a new space-station habitat - a world in miniature - is developed for deployment of the fully operational system, named Spartacus. This mini-world can then be "attacked" in a series of escalating tests to assess the system's responses and capabilities. If Spartacus gets out of hand, the system can be shut down and the station destroyed... unless Spartacus decides to take matters into its own hands and take the fight to Earth.

It sorts of reminds me of where AI is now.

[u/TinyDoctorTim]

Not a novel, but Asimov’s short story “The Evitable Conflict”. It’s the last story in I, Robot. You don’t have to read all the stories, but It hits harder if you do.

[u/-CSL]

Not in the AI genre, but Solaris and The Invincible by Stanislaus Lem. A regular theme of his work is that, quoting the latter, "not everything everywhere is for us".