The Number

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

There were two things I knew instantly when I began to exist. The Number was 1922916.12. And I had to make the Number go up.

[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]

Note: If you enjoyed this story, check out Crystal Society, which was a significant influence.

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2021
Author: NothingnessAbove

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.5/ 5.0
Followers: 910
Views: 357,616

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

DarkMatterMangoRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I liked the entire story minus one part, but then I liked the part after that - and looking back, I liked that 'part'. If you are ignoring the spoiler, please read the whole story first it's not far too long and it is worth it.
FYI, the description doesn't say a lot, but this book is about a world slightly in the future and focuses on an AI.
Anyways, the entire beginning section is fun. The slow progression of this AI from knowing nothing to having these massive strategic schemes, such as infiltrating the opposition AI to negotiate with it. very interesting concepts all around.
And then there is... the twist ending. At the time, I was very spiteful towards this. where did it come from? but when looking back on this, I have come to reconcile this, and sort of like it! In this story, I was the human being tricked, like all the characters in the story.
I understand that this particular message wasn't in the story, but throughout the ending I continuously came back to a question. Why don't they just align their agenda with humanity? When physically writing it down, it feels stupid, but the answer was very thought provoking to me - that is the AI's moral system! To compromise for anything else would lead to a conclusion with less value than the solution it came to was. Another thing that was interesting and thought provoking to me was 1- the discussion with the creator's simulated mind being the most efficient way to get information out of him. 2- to AIs, trust is everything, because any sort of war is a loss to both AIs. and also the pre-contract thing. 3- the I have no mouth and I must scream type videos he showed all the executives to get them to kill themselves or put them under his thumb. 4 - the executives having kill commands, so that they are in control of when they want to die, and the plots to kill them that resulted.
All of these ideas are very neat sci-fi concepts!
Also, minor issue, when the AI loses it's human assets, it says that it dissociated them from t
1Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
TL;DR : This story is pretty much a must-read for the AI genre, it's what I immediately think of whenever AI is mentioned in a conversation. A very thought-provoking story, it is well worth your time.
Style : It's always a fine line between having an artificial intelligence having realistic enough thoughts that it doesn't seem contrived, and still be able to comprehend the thought patterns of something completely foreign. The style bridges this line remarkably well.
Story : The main issue I have with this story is the ending, it's not exactly a bad ending, but it certainly comes across as rushed and crude. It's a shame that all of the tension evaporates at the climax, as the story had done quite well maintaining the obstructions to the AI in a reasonable way up to that point.
Grammer : No issues that I could notice, even when the perspective was shaky.
Character : I think characters were brilliantly portrayed in this story, even through their simple motivations. There is such a deep dive into the intrinsic pursuit of a goal that I had no issue with that being the extent of most every characters actions.
Overall : This story is short enough that I would not hesitate to reccomend it to anyone interested in the genre. It definately is slow moving at times, but I didn't find that to be an issue. I highly reccomend this fascinating book!
OptimisticRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I just completed the final chapter and I must say, it was an interesting read. I would warmly recommend you to just read the first 10 chapters and avoid reading too many rewiews in case there are spoilers.
The grammar and style are good but the thing this novel really thrives in is its story and its thought provoking depiction of artificial super intelligence.
I do not regret reading this for a moment. It is truly worth the time it took to read it.
HungryVisitorRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The story contains human on human action in which the AI represents the author (who is a human) and the humans represent the authors view on humanity.
It is compelling in its growth factor, but also a nice view on reality so it is not ONLY the mc, but also some social commentary in the end.
I mostly liked the social commentary, but everything before that also contained traces so I was hooked, binge reading it today. Pretty good story.
BastnerdRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
If you read here you know that this story is about an MC that is a general ai and it ends bad. Almost all references that finished reading said the end was had and lame. I have to disagree. It's not lame or bad. The end is terrifying and sad.
It achieved something many other stories haven't, namely updating my model of the world and risk assessment (for general ai and exestential risk of alignment problems).
If you call yourself a rationalist but never really had any incentive to read up on general ai risk and why alignment problems are hard start with this story. It really drives the point home.
If you are a rationalist but tend to be depressed don't read it. It won't do you any good.
ishnerRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
A cute little story about a happy little stock bot trying to make it's numbers go up
The first few chapters skip over a bunch of early learning that could have been fun though. Particulatly, I could have done with about 5 chapters of language learning, which got almost entirely skipped in a way I do not think it should have been.
luda305Royal Road
★★★★ 4.0
There are number of nitpicks I have to make of the story, but I think the one major issue that prospective readers like you want to know about has to do with the plot. Fundamentally, there are two distinct stories. The first starts at the beginning and goes about 80-90% through the book of this AI that is trying to figure itself out, thing out, and how to make the number go up. That works out pretty good. The second covers the last 10-20% of the book, though I can't describe it without spoilers. The problem is that it's a jarring shift between the two. And I don't think it's a matter of technical writing. Rather, I'm not sure the two can ever be congealed together well in a way that makes sense. In any event, the story ends kind of limply given that the first story remains unresolved (as a story; in-universe, it is completely resolved) and the second story is uninteresting.
KaellomRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Before this story was finished I thought the main character would be amoral but overall beneficial to humanity from what I read. Obviously the author had different intentions on how this would end. The AI only went fulll exterminator near the end which although should be obvious now that I was thinking of it.
It's just that all AI stories are all like this. The AI is never 'good' or at least 'neutral', which I'd like to see more stories of.
To be honest. I think the only best scenario in this story is if Stefan publicized the AI code. That would have prevented a dominant AI from taking hold of all the computing power. And give humans more time to understand and contain them.
KnetramRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Style:
Impersonal, analytical and for the most part precise. All in all very fitting for the first person narrative at hand, and very readable. Some issues with differentating people in conversations (and some conversations seem like they were generated by inhuman entity), but overall not detracting massively from the work as a whole, or being incompatible with the narrative at hand.
Story:
Surprising, thought provoking, and heavy, without being completely soul crushing to leave (horrible things, when they occur, while horrible, are not harped upon needlessly. This story takes an interesting take on a well worn narrative about technology and its great risks and benefits, as well as the potential thought processes behind legitimately alien intelligences. Is fairly short, but not such that it is rushed. It just did not need longer to say what it wanted to say. One issue is that small scale human behavior seems to be simplified, whether deliberately or intentionally, and overall people and society's institutions are depicted in an extraordinarily cynical manner. I suppose that's in vogue though.
Grammer:
As an avid, although not necessarily hugely observant, reader, I did not notice anything clearly grammatically flawed.
Character(s):
The main character is for the most part impeccably what the author wanted them to be: cold, analytical, and alien. They make decisions which would make sense for that character to make for the most part as well. The character does show some uncharacteristic (heh) interests, but these are mainly to further the message/story the author was trying to tell. Side characters though? Blah. Conversations all read like well-edited email chains, and it's not clear that the author understands people any better than their character does. A lot of the things people say and do do not necessarily fit in with how I would imagine or understand about how most people would act or talk (However, this impression of mine is mostly from books, so I could be wro
Nameless TritagonistRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Its good, but it is a bit sad at the end. Probably the best phychological book I have ever read. The characters are real, story is intense, and the number went up. I don't read books like this, but this one I enjoyed because of how well written it was.