Dune is released as scheduled. Why does such an advanced civilization have no computer robots?

Last weekend, the much-anticipated science fiction masterpiece "Dune" was released as scheduled. First-time audiences may be curious about why the seemingly advanced civilization in the film does not have computer robots. In fact, the original work has an explanation for this setting.

Old players who like games may have "extra" feelings for "Dune". The game "Dune 2" launched by Westwood once laid the foundation for "real-time strategy games"; and sandworms, spices (or "Melange"), astronauts' unions, ornithopters, etc., frequently appeared in various science fiction works later in various derivative forms.

Dune was published in 1965. Compared with other science fiction writers of the same period who were keen on the theme of symbiosis between computers and future humans, Herbert laid a different basic setting at the beginning of the story - a world without computers and robots.

Why do we always want to fight with AI? This is due to a setting mentioned at the beginning of the novel: Butlerian Jihad.

As an important event in the history of the Dune world, the war took place more than 10,000 years before the main story. At that time, humans mastered interstellar navigation technology and expanded their distribution among the stars in the universe; at the same time, they created a large number of "thinking machines" to serve themselves, and even used these "thinking machines" to form a government to implement rule and management.

Hundreds of years later, some people began to be unable to bear the high-pressure rule and enslavement of the "thinking machines" and rose up in anger to rebel. A war between humans and "thinking machines" finally broke out. In the end, humans won and machines lost, and all "thinking machines" were destroyed.

The human world established the iron rule that "never create a thinking machine", and from then on, computers, AI, and robots disappeared from the world of "Dune".

Herbert's setting in "Dune" may be largely a response to Asimov's "Robot-Galactic Empire-Foundation" series of works - a deduction of Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics".

Taking the "three laws" to their extreme, a fundamental ethical and philosophical question emerges: if the cost of protecting a human being is to watch another human being get hurt, how should a robot act? An intelligent machine version of the "trolley problem": the battle between absolute moralism and utilitarianism.

Faced with this dilemma, Asimov added a "Zeroth Law" to the plot: robots must prioritize the survival and safety of humans as a whole, and the three major laws are all subject to this.

So all the robots stopped operating, and there were no more robots in the human world after that.

After reading Asimov's series, when you look back at "Dune", you can clearly find the correspondence between them: the Dune universe can be seen as a dark version of Asimov's universe.

Popular science fiction films and TV shows such as The Terminator and The Matrix also reflect this sentiment, to the point that "robots destroying humanity" has become a fixed theme, and the handheld laser guns and metal skulls in The Terminator have become the embodiment of terror in the public's subconscious. The rapid development of artificial intelligence in recent years has also deepened this anxiety. For example, Elon Musk has also come out to join in the fun and call for research on "safe" artificial intelligence.

Dune sets a world where computer technology is banned, and as a result, the significance of human beings is highlighted. In the original text, because there is no "thinking machine" as a crutch, humans have developed various "schools" to expand their own thinking power.

For example, the Mentat School: they train students to become "Mentats" - a type of professional used to replace computers, with unparalleled analytical and calculation capabilities; and the navigators of the Astronautical Union, who use spices to enhance their perception of hyperspace so that starships can navigate in the subspace (that's why the spices in the novel are so critical, they support the entire interstellar shipping industry); and the Bene Gesserit, who also acquire powerful, almost magical abilities - such as precognition, manipulating others through words, etc. - through taking spices and strict mental and physical training.

This is where the classic science fiction meaning of "Dune" lies: there are no computers or trendy new technologies, but a complete, heterogeneous, and self-consistent world grows within its own framework.