{"id":233045,"date":"2025-12-14T22:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T22:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/233045\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T22:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T22:25:10","slug":"rational-optimist-sci-fi-writer-liu-cixin-on-why-hell-be-happy-if-ai-surpasses-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/233045\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Rational optimist\u2019: sci-fi writer Liu Cixin on why he\u2019ll be happy if AI surpasses humans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liu Cixin<\/a> is the most influential contemporary science fiction writer in China. He is best known for his trilogy that starts with The Three-Body Problem, for which he won a Hugo Award<\/a> for best novel in 2015. The trilogy earned international acclaim and has been adapted for television in both Chinese and English.<\/p>\n

Born in 1963 and raised in Shanxi, Liu started his working life as a computer engineer at a power plant in the central province. Inspired by British sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke, Liu began writing in the late 1980s, eventually giving up his day job in the late 2000s to write full time.<\/p>\n

Liu took part in the following Q&A with media and students from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in October, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate in humanities. It first appeared in SCMP Plus<\/a>. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here<\/a>.The<\/strong> Three-Body trilogy<\/strong><\/a> centred around one theme: the \u201c<\/strong>dark forest<\/strong>\u201d theory \u2013 a cosmos where civilisations hide or strike pre-emptively, fearing others will destroy them first, and in a dark forest, every creature must stay silent to survive. Do you think humanity should remain silent in the universe?<\/strong>Science fiction<\/a>, as I have often said, is not prophecy. It does not predict technology or the future. It is more like a catalogue of possibilities, and by laying out every possible scenario, it creates the illusion of foresight. Why does it sometimes appear prophetic? Because if you imagine enough possibilities, a few of them will inevitably turn out right \u2013 like a stopped clock that is correct twice a day.<\/p>\n

The dark forest is one of those possibilities. If there truly exists a galactic civilisation made up of different intelligent species, there could be all kinds of outcomes, with some good, some neutral, some bad. The dark forest is simply the darkest one I could imagine.<\/p>\n

But there are other possibilities too. Some scholars believe that as a civilisation\u2019s technology advances, its moral standards also rise and such civilisations would respect all forms of life \u2013 even help others grow and evolve. That is also a possibility, though we have no proof.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liu Cixin is the most influential contemporary science fiction writer in China. He is best known for his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[291,124139,124136,297,381,8736,18,10533,124138,19,124142,17,124141,124143,43814,127,20500,98378,124140,124137,82,1475,98385,124135,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-233045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-arthur-c-clark","10":"tag-ball-lightning","11":"tag-chatgpt","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-deepseek","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-hong-kong-university-of-science-and-technology","16":"tag-hugo-award","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-immanuel-kant","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-jules-henri-poincare","21":"tag-kevin-kelly","22":"tag-liu-cixin","23":"tag-netflix","24":"tag-nobel-prize","25":"tag-scmp-plus","26":"tag-sea-of-dreams","27":"tag-shanxi","28":"tag-technology","29":"tag-tencent","30":"tag-the-three-body-problem","31":"tag-the-wandering-earth","32":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}