Friendship is Optimal: Ponies + MMORPG + AI => The Singularity => ???
Gentlemen, this My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fic, Friendship is Optimal, is interesting. Like, very, very interesting. It truly is a riveting tale, old chaps;
Quote:
Hanna, the CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios, just won the contract to write the official My Little Pony MMO. Hanna has built an A.I. Princess Celestia and given her one basic drive: to satisfy everybody's values through friendship and ponies. Princess Celestia
will satisfy your values through friendship and ponies, and it
will be
completely consensual.
Gosh, people I'd love to tell you WHY this is awesome, but that would be immense spoilers, so I'm spoilering it.
Spoiler
Show
Essentially, it's an
Assimilation Plot, except it goes a lot deeper into it than most works, which just treat it as some sort of vague threat against all individuality or something. The
hero triggers it, via an Artificial Intelligence,
to save the world from something much worse. From that point on, everyone is powerless to stop it, so this time we actually get to see how it turns out. It really poses serious, interesting moral questions, which are up to the reader to solve. Is Celestia the saviour of all mankind, or is she an incontrollable pest? Is what she is doing right? Are the outcomes worth the sacrifies?
Is the happiness she provides genuine, or is it simply a shallow eternal Dungeon Full Of Monsters Just Difficult Enough to Challenge You? Does it even matter?
So, yeah, it's pretty great, and very well written, with a prose that flows very nicely. It's blunt, honest, and straightforward. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, and I'd really love to hear your thoughts about it.
