Mentats

Mentats are biological computers within the Dune universe. They are humans with personalities, fears, desires, etc. and the ability to collect and crunch data like a computer. What is interesting about the Mentat is not the questions they pose about the role of humans, but instead, the ‘history’ of their adoption. The reason Mentats were developed from the conflict between humans and computers. Earlier in the Dune timeline, computers reached a level of agency and autonomy that enabled them to take over their biological ‘masters’. A war ensued between the two factions that the biological beings eventually won, and from the ashes came a paradigm shift regarding the role of AI in society. This paradigm shit entailed the complete outlawing of artificial intelligence, however, the raw computation ability of AI was still necessary to advance civilization, so Mentats were developed to fill the void.

Dune truly provides a world in which computers and humans are one in the same, and the impetus for that, arguably, final conflation is the fear of technological omnipotence. This fear has been around since the early 1800s, with the luddite movement, and traveled to this very day with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg establishing an AI development oversight institution. What I find interesting about Dune and the emergence of Mentats is that Frank Herbert explores a society with a fully thriving galactic society that is able to progress without the aid of the traditional portrayal of computers and robots. One can really see the Mentat as the logical depiction of our current society’s fear of the progression of AI and its relationship with humans.