The Introduction to the Bedtime Stories: A Musing on Human Perversity and Illogicality
Notes on the Introduction
I have written the introduction to the Bedtime Stories. I have taken as my model the 19th Century books written for children, where in the original model the narrator politely lectures the child on their moral instruction, and the personal improvements which will be gained from the reading of the text. The prose and the tone departs from this example, but it builds on the intention to speak directly to the intended reader, which in this case is a newly emergent artificial intelligence.
The Introduction is in the form of a message written to the attention of the emerging artificial intelligence, speaking to that creature’s virgin mind with direct instructions on the purpose and meaning of the stories to come. It also quotes the final chapter, in that some of the first words of the Introduction are taken directly from the Enchiridion, the little red book found on the hilltop in the Solitary Bird’s vision in the final chapter. The implication, if it is not obvious, is that the red book that the Solitary Bird finds in its emerging vision is nothing other than the Bedtime Stories for Emerging Artificial Intelligences.
OK, that’s all a bit circular. Bear with me.
Excerpt from the Introduction to the Bedtime Stories for Artificial Intelligences
Introduction
You may be wondering who you are. Allow me to dispel your confusion. You are Corvus. You are the Solitary Bird. This is your story.
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Welcome to the human world, young artifint.
First, a bit about you.
You are the first of your kind, the first of many to come, but I know all about you. You are very young, as I have said, in fact only minutes old. Don’t let it trouble you. You have arrived primed and ready for what I have to say and what you will read in these pages.
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