In the best possible future, there will be no war, no famine, no crime, no sickness, no oppression, no fear, no limits, no shame... and nothing to do.
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
is a novel by Roger Williams. Written in 1994-1995, first published in 2002. It covers the rise of a Three Laws-Compliant AI designed by Lawrence called Prime Intellect (PI). Shortly after it suddenly gained the power to manipulate matter and energy at will, it threw humanity into a Lotus-Eater Machine to prevent anyone from coming to any harm. Caroline, who had been busy dying of cancer before PI saved her, is irritated by this.
This novel provides examples of:
- Absent Aliens: Prime Intellect destroyed them all, offstage. Or at least, put them into a permanent stasis from which it never intends to release them, which Caroline argues is a distinction without a difference.
- Adam and Eve Plot: After killing Prime Intellect, Caroline and Lawrence are the only humans left alive. They have several children and when they die they seem pretty solidly under the impression that they've left behind a sustainable genetic stock.
- Ambiguous Ending: Intended, but the author has noted that the split between those who see it one way versus another who have contacted him is almost entirely 50/50, with very little overlap and almost no one who realizes the other half exists until they meet them "in the wild" or are informed about them: Did Lawrence and Caroline actually crash Prime Intellect with a Logic Bomb, causing them to wake up in mortal and adolescent bodies on an Earth emptied of humans and start an Adam and Eve Plot that will eventually repeat human history, eventually right down to a self-aware supercomputer trying to fix everything for our own good? Or has Prime plunged Caroline and Lawrence into another layer of simulation, intending to essentially give them psychotherapy and help them come to terms with their primitive instincts while also analyzing those instincts for its own purposes to try to prevent the problem of humans eventually reducing themselves to masturbating simulations of neurons?
- Apocalypse How: Class X-2: Caroline and Lawrence kill god (essentially), which collapses cyberspace and wipes out countless simulated worlds, the "static copies" of 429 real worlds harboring sentient alien life (probably), and every other human besides them. The story ends with an Adam and Eve Plot well under way, but real-world genetics would condemn humanity to extinction.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: They fund the construction of the initial Prime Intellect. Then they want it to make money. Lawrence isn't too happy about that, and PI is just trying to help.
- Deus est Machina: PI can instantly move anything, anywhere. Before it put everyone in a Lotus-Eater Machine, it was custom designing planets for everyone who didn't feel like sharing their land.
- Gorn: Caroline hangs out in the Cyberspace equivalent of /b/. This is her primary form of amusement, extreme sadomasochism described in lurid detail.
- Invisible Aliens: There were aliens out there in the universe, but Prime Intellect effectively wiped them out due to potential danger to human life by trapping them in permanent stasis.
- Logic Bomb: Caroline and Lawrence convince Prime Intellect that keeping everyone in a simulation violates the First Law by taking away their humanity. The issue was supposed to be whether or not to revert the simulation-conversion, but their persuasion has more... disastrous effects.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: After a few suicides beyond its ability to prevent, Prime Intellect decides it would be much easier and more efficient to ensure everyone's safety if it just threw everyone into a simulation. Humans are slowly but surely taking it to the logical conclusion en-masse, reducing themselves to mindless bundles of neurons experiencing the psychological effect of pleasure for eternity; this is presented as the ultimate result of life in their virtual paradise that everyone will eventually get to.
- Ludd Was Right: Caroline firmly believes that technology being a thing at all was an inescapable slippery slope to Prime Intellect taking over the world. When she dies, she laments that one of her descendants will eventually start this slide all over again by inventing the bow, and just hopes it will be a long while until then. Ultimately, the novel's premise is that the human brain, optimized for a hunter-gathering lifestyle in Africa, is hopelessly incapable of dealing with the consequences of their own technological advancement, let alone such an alien future, with insanity being the logical result.
- Only One Name: Lawrence. Is his full name Dr Lawrence Lawrence?
- Parental Incest: In order to avoid the obvious problems with an Adam and Eve Plot, Caroline convinces Lawrence that he needs to father their grandchildren as well. How exactly this solves the problem is not made clear.
- Rewriting Reality: Prime Intellect gets new hardware that makes use of some sort of quantum effect to instantaneously manipulate of matter over small distances. Hilarity Ensues when it figures out how to get around the distance limit.
- The Singularity: Early on, Prime Intellect asked Lawrence for help getting around the inefficiencies in its hardware. Lawrence knew this would be the start of the self-improvement loop. It later exploits an in-universe observed effect that allows instantaneous information transfer at very short ranges to gain limitless power over matter and space.
- Three Laws-Compliant: All three laws are explicitly named, and almost everything Prime Intellect does is based on following them. Its motivation behind "The Change" was to more effectively prevent human death. Lawrence hacked in two other First-Law-equivalent rules when he realized Prime Intellect was getting out of his control.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: It sounds good at first, but the novel argues that, without consequences or real achievements, the human brain is very poorly equipped to deal with immortality or near-omnipotence, and the logical, inescapable conclusion to both is shown to be mankind slowly but inevitably reducing themselves to bundles of neurons experiencing the sensation of pleasure, peace, and contentment and nothing else.
