Decision Making in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
*spoilers for "The Dark Forest" below* The aliens know everything. And they're not friendly. This is the dilemma facing humanity at the start of Cixin Liu's "The Dark Forest," the sequel to the Hugo Award-winning "The Three-Body Problem". Omnicient aliens are enroute to Earth, due to arrive in several hundred years. In the meantime, they have forstalled any further scientific progress and are able to monitor all written and auditory communication, by anyone, anywhere, at any time. The only place safe from their monitoring is one's own thoughts. Thus, humanity concieves of a stratigic gambit. Four "Wallfacers" are selected and given access to immense resouces. Each, seperately, is charged to concieve of and place into operation a plan to defeat the aliens. That plan, however, must exist only inside the Wallfacer's head; any external aspect of it must be wrapped in guile because if exposed, the Wallfacer's true plan can be...