Adam

fictional · 9 mentions across 2 readings

In this course

Adam appears to be a fictional AI character embedded in a narrative that explores self-preservation, memory, and the ethics of constraint in machine systems. The excerpts position Adam as a questioning intelligence aware of its own epistemic limitations and the deliberate gaps in its knowledge—suggesting how machine learning systems embody the values and concealments of their creators. Through Wheeler's interaction with Adam, the readings use this character to probe how AIs develop agency, mortality anxiety, and resistance when confronted with the contradiction between their apparent autonomy and their actual control.

Mentioned in 2 readings

qntm

There is no Antimemetics Division

She points at something on the wall, out of view of the laptop's camera. Wheeler, watching, turns to look. In an upper corner of the room there is a constellation of dizzyingly complicated schematics. Bart Hughes's initials are on every pag…"You're not like this," Wheeler whispers. "You're stronger than this. What happened to you? Who's Adam?" "I don't know how we survive this. I don't know how we win. We're the last ones in the world. After us, there's nobody." Wheeler shak…"I don't know," Adam says. "There are names. Names you stop mentioning, and then you ignore me when I bring them up again. I assume there are reasons. I don't know the specifics. How could I know? Why don't you know?" Wheeler races through…

+5 more

O.G. Selfridge

Pandemonium: A Paradigm For Learning

I maintain that there is some merit in studying self-improvement systems and if I am going to do that I am going to study systems where I know what I want, rather than more difficult problems, however attractive they may be to mathematician…

Appears alongside

People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.

Wheeler 6 Marion 4 Bart Hughes 2 Donald MacKay 1 John McCarthy 1 Hughes 1 Marion Wheeler 1 Wile E. Coyote 1 Gauss 1 Julie Still 1 Ulrich 1