The most advanced British Battle-cruiser ever built, and the most terrible War Vessel to ever sail the seas, for twenty years.
Until the Bismarck got it “several” lucky shots, from ten mile away, which found the weakness in the Battle-cruiser design.
Unfortunately, the Battle-cruiser promptly sunk, as the Munitions room was breached and then the vessel exploded.
Although, it needn’t have been the more powerful and better trained Bismarck that sank the Hood, as the weakness showed even a lowly Corvette could have achieved the same result.
The other problem was relying on lighter Battle Armor, as the Hood was one of the fastest Battle-cruiser’s on the high sea’s, and heavy Battle Armor was “not necessary”, for a fast Battle-cruiser.
A fundamental flaw in the engagement was not using the Battle-cruiser’s speed, which was also a tactical problem, as it effected weapons accuracy.
Advanced technology and idea’s are only advanced until Advanced Military Technology is tested in Battle by Different Technology and circumstances.
By Different Technology, I mean not necessary better, or more advanced, just “different” from what was expected, or assumed.
That’s when the old militarily expression “FooBar” comes into play.
Again, it gets back to cost, arrogance and resource. Until proven otherwise, it’s superior technology.
Also, as history has shown, circumstances often dictate the actual engagement, which is when Superior Technology, suddenly, it isn’t.
Then your back to the drawing board, to fix that problem.
Predictably what happens next, given our own history, regardless of the nation or the military involved, is the new solutions are usually ambitious, ill-defined and at times completely unrealistic.
The eventual solution then suffers the same fate, based on cost, arrogance and resource.
The only way to manage this dilemma, to any successful level, is to constantly learn from your mistakes, and to think through the outcomes and solutions, based on worse case scenarios.
Then pray that you don’t have an inept and ill trained crew aboard something like the Titanic and it’s circumstances. But that’s another whole argument in and of itself.
No, a corvette’s guns could not penetrate even the weakest part of HMS Hood’s armor, and certainly could not have got into the turrets or magazine hoists to blow the ship up.
That required 15 inch guns, fired at high angles to plunge through the decks (the weakest armor). The danger to ships like the Hood (and to battleships) from small fast ships was that
the heavy main guns would have trouble hitting the target, and the boat might penetrate to torpedo range.
Nobody believed that a battlecruiser’s speed made heavy armor unnecessary, but it was incompatible with the speed needed for a battlecruiser to carry out its missions, so protection was sacrificed..
Battlecruisers were designed to scout for the main battle fleet, to drive off enemy scouts, and to hunt down enemy cruisers. So they needed the main guns of a battleship
and the speed of a fast cruiser. That much mass dedicated to guns and propulsion didn’t leave much for armor. It was a weakness naval planners knew and accepted.
Battlecruisers were supposed to stay far enough away from battleships that neither side could score hits; if they failed in this, they could expect to get slaughtered,
and a slugging match between battlecruisers would be a mutual slaughter, but a ship with armor instead of speed wouldn’t even be where the battlecruiser was needed.
The Battle of Jutland showed that battlecruisers really could be slaughtered (4 of 14 battlecruisers sank, and only 1 of about 50 battleships – and that 1 was obsolete.)
But the battleships and battlecruisers were also used differently – both sides yanked back their battleships at the first sign of danger, while sending the battlecruisers out to trip any traps.
The Hood was designed and started construction before Jutland. The designers tried to change the armor/speed/guns tradeoff by making the Hood over 10,000 tons larger than any
battleships of the era. It had a main battery (8 15-inch guns in 4 turrets) matching the 20+ years newer Bismarck, and side armor that was only a little weaker. But they cut way back
on the deck armor. In WWI, the main turret guns only elevated to 20 degrees, so it didn’t take much armor to make shells glance off the deck – and battleship guns at maximum
elevation gave such a long range that any hits would be a freak of chance. Nor was much armor needed against air attacks; WWI bombs were generally 100 pounds and smaller.
So when the Hood launched late in WWI, it could have been counted as a very fast battleship, except for the deck armor. And it was the biggest warship built until the late 1930’s.
But it was beginning to look obsolete in several ways by the late 1930’s. Carrier aircraft could deliver 1,000 pound bombs on target. All new ships could elevate their main guns
to at least 30 degrees, and improvements in fire control meant they might even hit a moving ship at the resulting range.
The USA was starting work on the Iowa class battleships, about the Hood’s size, with 9 16-inch guns, thick enough armor to protect the Iowa even when it closed in to punch
heavy shells through the Hood’s heaviest side armor, and an improved propulsion system that made it nearly as fast. The Japanese were secretive, but it could be assumed (correctly)
that they were building ships to match the Iowa class, and other ships to far exceed it. And the Germans were building the Bismarck and Tirpitz. The Hood was coming due for an
overhaul, and the Admiralty planned to turn this into a major upgrade and modernization: They were going to remove some side armor and install much heavier deck armor,
more antiaircraft, and maybe modernize the machinery. In 1941…
But first they desperately needed one more mission out of the old ship – to guard Denmark Strait against the Bismarck
breaking out into the Atlantic. The Brits also sent their brand-new fast battleship HMS Prince of Wales too, but this was both a weaker ship by design (to conform with treaties
that expired in 1936), and too damned new – it sailed with dockside gun installation crews still aboard, and problems with the guns cropped up in the battle.
So, the Hood was the best they could design in 1916, for specifications that emphasized speed. It was no longer the best in 1941, but it takes time to build battleships,
as well as steel and other materials that are hard to get in war time. The Hood and the Prince of Wales was all
they had that could reach Denmark Strait in time to block the Bismarck. (There was one more fast battleship, King George V, but it was unavailable and as weak as the PoW.
This was the flagship of the Home Fleet, and was guarding the nearer Iceland/Faeroe Island gap along with several older and much slower battleships. I think the idea was that
if the Bismarck came that way, the KGV might survive battle long enough to force the Bismarck to maneuver and give at least one of the slow battleships a chance to catch up.)
Hmmm, Sex bots with what is assumed to be fairly stable AI technology, that are made with potentially stolen technology.
Somebody’s been very naughty, and it’s not the Sex Bots.
This could also have a good story arc in the Future, as a lot of drudge and other required work on a Spaceship could by done by Android style AI’s, as could a lot of Planetary based requirements,
The only obvious restriction to advanced Android use is the “Star Jump” issue and related EMP and electrical field interference issues elsewhere.
But, Iain, if the androids are sapient then are they not “persons”? And if they are persons then would not the use of them as you describe constitute or at least be tantamount to slavery? I, personally, do not see the real advantage to anthropomorphic machines. I have no problem with Frank Herbert’s commandment, “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind,” I just would not go so far as the inhabitants of the Dune universe and outlaw all computers and calculators. I don’t even have a problem with AI per se. So called “weak AI” are not (so far as we can tell) even sentient much less sapient. I truly believe that if machine sapience arises it will be an accident. I don’t see us ever knowing enough about the “how” and “why” of our own sapience to be able.to.purpose build what is called “strong AI”. I doubt PC imagines Esmay and her cohorts as the result of a deliberate effort to produce machine sapience. I can see where Esmay being sapient could even be problematic under combat conditions. Having a ship which can sing is all well and good but those of us here who have served in the armed forces know that situations arise where a machine has to be operated to destruction in order to accomplish a mission. What if Esmay or one of her cohorts refuses to be piloted to destruction? The result could be major loss of biological lives. But that would require consideration of relative primacy of persons depending upon their origin. All persons are equal but when the chips are down are biological persons “more equal”?
Interesting story, Catman, but I wish you hadn’t opened that particular can of worms.
.. criminal mischief .. the intentional destruction of property.
depending on the wording.. is a key factor,,. one example: if more than one owner,, can not be sent out to be knowingly damaged.. another: homeowner destroys home,, in order to pay less on taxes..
Emay.. in the real world,. till sapience is proved “in court” ‘they’ are a smart machine.!!
Rob, I do not believe that criminal mischief would apply to willfully damaging one’s own property. Other people’s property, certainly, but not one’s own property. Even destruction of jointly held property would not be considered an offense until/unless one of the co-owners complained. So far as I can tell, I am entirely at liberty to take a sledgehammer to my automobile if I choose.so long as in the process I do not create a public nuisance or leave the results as an eyesore afterwards.
Side note: under Texas law criminal mischief against one’s property by another after local sundown is justification for use of deadly force. If I am not mistaken graffiti would fall under the criminal mischief statute. We take property crimes.seriously here in Texas.
hence the “key,, wording” .. but you are mostly correct,, criminal mischief is a grey area,, where they can get you.
your car: IF i see you destroying your car an complain,, criminal mischief.. IF any money is owed/lean, and you destroy car not to pay,, criminal mischief..
Bill, when you are in a war that you might not win, you use men and machines to destruction. AFAIK, the USA armed forces never assigned a man to a suicide mission,
one with _no_ chance of completing the mission and escaping alive, but there were several wars where many men performed jobs with a slim chance of coming home.
When we feared Russian bombers with nukes, there were interceptors with two missiles tipped with small nukes, and an autopilot programmed to ram if the missiles didn’t do
the job. The pilot had a few seconds to bail out, if surviving a bail-out in the stratosphere at supersonic speeds was even possible. And in WWII, many jobs were not suicide, but pretty close:
Carrying a flamethrower made you the target of every enemy rifleman to see you – and you were carrying the means of your own cremation.
A bazooka man _could_ kill a Tiger tank – if he waited under a ridge until the belly of the Tiger was above him.
When you began flying a WWI fighter, your life expectancy was a few weeks.
And even though commanders never ordered it, many men chose a suicide tactic in the heat of battle, when it became the only way to save their comrades.
There are many posthumous Medals of Honor awarded for jumping on a grenade. Some pilots finally won a victory by ramming in mid-air.
Men in many sinking ships stuck to their post in the engine room or to other critical posts until there was no escape for them.
Each of the commanders of tiny sub-chasers at Leyte Gulf chose to attack Japanese battleships just like they had real warships – and were so convincing that the
Japanese backed off until the pesky, but not very dangerous boats were destroyed. This took much longer than it should have because they were firing armor-piercing
explosive shells at boats that weren’t constructed heavy enough to detonate the shells; apparently the Japanese thought only a much bigger ship would act like that!
So if we do build sentient AI for war, I expect we’ll build them to sacrifice themselves when called for. But I would rather avoid the whole issue by not making them sapient,
sentient, or even capable of understanding that their existence ends when they steer the missile into the target. (Not that we’re any closer to achieving any of these
things than we were when I was taking computer science courses 50 years ago.)
Regarding the androids (like Jochi yesterday I prefer the classic sci-fi terms) I can see two problems. First it their manufacture. Clearly there has been some industrial espionage going on and Imogen’s R&D has been penetrated. I suppose we’ll see whether it was a spy or a mole. In any case somebody outside Imogen is using a brand new process “We haven’t even released it to the Navy yet, much less the civilian market.” without authorization. That indicates espionage. Industrial espionage is more common than you might think. Back in the 90s before my lady retired she worked for a small company called DPT Laboratories. They made a whole host of products based upon creams and lotions. They also had a dynamite odor killer. Anyhow they had a guy running the formulation dept. who was an absolute genius with developing and manufacturing lotions and creams. DPT was well known in the industry. They were OEM manufacturers for a large number of OTC products. When I worked for Caremark Pharmacies in customer service a huge chunk of their topical formulary were made by DPT for various named companies.
Anyway, at one point Bed Bath & Beyond approached DPT to develop and manufacture a line of bath creams. Contracts were signed and DPT’s R&D got to work. They did several small scale production runs and sent the results to BB&B. BB&B liked the results and asked for more limited production runs. Note: BB&B was paying for all this but DPT wasn’t making much profit choosing to recover costs during production. Anyhow response from BB&B was favorable but somehow execs at BB&B would not pull the trigger. Then they abandoned the project entirely. THEN the products started showing up in BB&B stores. BB&B owned the labels but DPT owned the products. It turned out that BB&B never intended to have DPT manufacture their line of bath lotions. They just wanted DPT to make enough for their chemists to reverse engineer them. In the end DPT sued the hell out of BB&B. AND the product were not nearly as good as what DPT would have made.
Okay so we have android bodies being illegally made. I also suspect that the process to produce strong AIs such as Esmay is proprietary. If these androids are sapient then their AI cores were produced illegally. Whether or not the androids are “people” will have to be determined in a court of law. Producing androids for any sort of labor would not – necessarily – be against empire law. Under empire law, the state’s only legitimate function is the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud. Manufacturing machines for some purpose would not in itself be illegal. Likewise, physically abusing said constructs would no more be illegal than some guy putting his fist through his nice 80″ television screen. Stupid but not illegal. The only way the androids’ manufacture would be illegal is if it depended upon unlicensed use of proprietary technology which in this case would appear to be the case. Interesting court battle on the horizon.
Now, to the issue of the two androids being “people”. That’s for a court of law to decide. Aaron is the absolute best person around (that we’ve met) to determine if the androids are able to pass a Turing test. I’ve encountered some pretty good “seeming” AIs on the web but I was always able to push them into the weeds. Software – like pretty much everything else – tends to fail under boundary conditions. As long ad you’re driving it down the middle of an empty road most software is fine. It’s when you metaphorically get close to the curb or shoulder that software falls apart. I would expect Aaron to be able to explore whether these constructs truly pass Turing’s muster. On the one hand the fact that they have the wit to call for help mitigates in their favor but it could merely be programmed in behavior in response to damage/malfunction. They clearly are sentient. It remains to be seen whether or not they are sapient.
T’would appear that the horned folk are not the best engineers around. Not exactly sure how taking out a spacecraft’s propulsion would simultaneously take out their powerplant but depending upon how they drew the electrical power for ship’s systems it could be possible. The fact that all three vessels went dark simultaneously would argue that it is a design flaw. Oh, well! Play stupid games; win stupid prizes. Perhaps it never occurred to the horned folk (BTW, Catmen, do they have a name/species designation?) that someone might attack the from the rear and take out their propulsion systems. More concerning is that they so far show no evidence of backup power systems. Only an extremely arrogant engineer designs systems with no redundancy.
Grab the popcorn, boys and girls, it’s gonna get interesting.
My money is on the owners or agents thereof. Valuable property is missing. It is a safe bet that the owners will try to reacquire. Reckon they’ll expect trouble or will they turn out to be bully boys figuring on intimidation winning the day?
Big “No D’Uh!” there, Bill.
I guess I should have been more specific.
Yes, the “they” would be the owners or agents of the owners.
BUT….are they someone we’ve seen before on these pages? If so, who in particular?
Or are these new players on The Gentle Wolf stage?
Pure guess: I expect they will be new players in the employ of someone we have seen before. Maybe that shadowy figure I think we’ve seen only once from the back. Less likely the CSA, Wong Empire, Hawaiians or other foreign interests. But the employer could be someone entirely new too.
Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket…
I give you the British Battle-cruiser, HMS Hood.
The most advanced British Battle-cruiser ever built, and the most terrible War Vessel to ever sail the seas, for twenty years.
Until the Bismarck got it “several” lucky shots, from ten mile away, which found the weakness in the Battle-cruiser design.
Unfortunately, the Battle-cruiser promptly sunk, as the Munitions room was breached and then the vessel exploded.
Although, it needn’t have been the more powerful and better trained Bismarck that sank the Hood, as the weakness showed even a lowly Corvette could have achieved the same result.
The other problem was relying on lighter Battle Armor, as the Hood was one of the fastest Battle-cruiser’s on the high sea’s, and heavy Battle Armor was “not necessary”, for a fast Battle-cruiser.
A fundamental flaw in the engagement was not using the Battle-cruiser’s speed, which was also a tactical problem, as it effected weapons accuracy.
Advanced technology and idea’s are only advanced until Advanced Military Technology is tested in Battle by Different Technology and circumstances.
By Different Technology, I mean not necessary better, or more advanced, just “different” from what was expected, or assumed.
That’s when the old militarily expression “FooBar” comes into play.
Again, it gets back to cost, arrogance and resource. Until proven otherwise, it’s superior technology.
Also, as history has shown, circumstances often dictate the actual engagement, which is when Superior Technology, suddenly, it isn’t.
Then your back to the drawing board, to fix that problem.
Predictably what happens next, given our own history, regardless of the nation or the military involved, is the new solutions are usually ambitious, ill-defined and at times completely unrealistic.
The eventual solution then suffers the same fate, based on cost, arrogance and resource.
The only way to manage this dilemma, to any successful level, is to constantly learn from your mistakes, and to think through the outcomes and solutions, based on worse case scenarios.
Then pray that you don’t have an inept and ill trained crew aboard something like the Titanic and it’s circumstances. But that’s another whole argument in and of itself.
No, a corvette’s guns could not penetrate even the weakest part of HMS Hood’s armor, and certainly could not have got into the turrets or magazine hoists to blow the ship up.
That required 15 inch guns, fired at high angles to plunge through the decks (the weakest armor). The danger to ships like the Hood (and to battleships) from small fast ships was that
the heavy main guns would have trouble hitting the target, and the boat might penetrate to torpedo range.
Nobody believed that a battlecruiser’s speed made heavy armor unnecessary, but it was incompatible with the speed needed for a battlecruiser to carry out its missions, so protection was sacrificed..
Battlecruisers were designed to scout for the main battle fleet, to drive off enemy scouts, and to hunt down enemy cruisers. So they needed the main guns of a battleship
and the speed of a fast cruiser. That much mass dedicated to guns and propulsion didn’t leave much for armor. It was a weakness naval planners knew and accepted.
Battlecruisers were supposed to stay far enough away from battleships that neither side could score hits; if they failed in this, they could expect to get slaughtered,
and a slugging match between battlecruisers would be a mutual slaughter, but a ship with armor instead of speed wouldn’t even be where the battlecruiser was needed.
The Battle of Jutland showed that battlecruisers really could be slaughtered (4 of 14 battlecruisers sank, and only 1 of about 50 battleships – and that 1 was obsolete.)
But the battleships and battlecruisers were also used differently – both sides yanked back their battleships at the first sign of danger, while sending the battlecruisers out to trip any traps.
The Hood was designed and started construction before Jutland. The designers tried to change the armor/speed/guns tradeoff by making the Hood over 10,000 tons larger than any
battleships of the era. It had a main battery (8 15-inch guns in 4 turrets) matching the 20+ years newer Bismarck, and side armor that was only a little weaker. But they cut way back
on the deck armor. In WWI, the main turret guns only elevated to 20 degrees, so it didn’t take much armor to make shells glance off the deck – and battleship guns at maximum
elevation gave such a long range that any hits would be a freak of chance. Nor was much armor needed against air attacks; WWI bombs were generally 100 pounds and smaller.
So when the Hood launched late in WWI, it could have been counted as a very fast battleship, except for the deck armor. And it was the biggest warship built until the late 1930’s.
But it was beginning to look obsolete in several ways by the late 1930’s. Carrier aircraft could deliver 1,000 pound bombs on target. All new ships could elevate their main guns
to at least 30 degrees, and improvements in fire control meant they might even hit a moving ship at the resulting range.
The USA was starting work on the Iowa class battleships, about the Hood’s size, with 9 16-inch guns, thick enough armor to protect the Iowa even when it closed in to punch
heavy shells through the Hood’s heaviest side armor, and an improved propulsion system that made it nearly as fast. The Japanese were secretive, but it could be assumed (correctly)
that they were building ships to match the Iowa class, and other ships to far exceed it. And the Germans were building the Bismarck and Tirpitz. The Hood was coming due for an
overhaul, and the Admiralty planned to turn this into a major upgrade and modernization: They were going to remove some side armor and install much heavier deck armor,
more antiaircraft, and maybe modernize the machinery. In 1941…
But first they desperately needed one more mission out of the old ship – to guard Denmark Strait against the Bismarck
breaking out into the Atlantic. The Brits also sent their brand-new fast battleship HMS Prince of Wales too, but this was both a weaker ship by design (to conform with treaties
that expired in 1936), and too damned new – it sailed with dockside gun installation crews still aboard, and problems with the guns cropped up in the battle.
So, the Hood was the best they could design in 1916, for specifications that emphasized speed. It was no longer the best in 1941, but it takes time to build battleships,
as well as steel and other materials that are hard to get in war time. The Hood and the Prince of Wales was all
they had that could reach Denmark Strait in time to block the Bismarck. (There was one more fast battleship, King George V, but it was unavailable and as weak as the PoW.
This was the flagship of the Home Fleet, and was guarding the nearer Iceland/Faeroe Island gap along with several older and much slower battleships. I think the idea was that
if the Bismarck came that way, the KGV might survive battle long enough to force the Bismarck to maneuver and give at least one of the slow battleships a chance to catch up.)
Hmmm, Sex bots with what is assumed to be fairly stable AI technology, that are made with potentially stolen technology.
Somebody’s been very naughty, and it’s not the Sex Bots.
This could also have a good story arc in the Future, as a lot of drudge and other required work on a Spaceship could by done by Android style AI’s, as could a lot of Planetary based requirements,
The only obvious restriction to advanced Android use is the “Star Jump” issue and related EMP and electrical field interference issues elsewhere.
Well, we look forward to seeing where this goes?
But, Iain, if the androids are sapient then are they not “persons”? And if they are persons then would not the use of them as you describe constitute or at least be tantamount to slavery? I, personally, do not see the real advantage to anthropomorphic machines. I have no problem with Frank Herbert’s commandment, “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind,” I just would not go so far as the inhabitants of the Dune universe and outlaw all computers and calculators. I don’t even have a problem with AI per se. So called “weak AI” are not (so far as we can tell) even sentient much less sapient. I truly believe that if machine sapience arises it will be an accident. I don’t see us ever knowing enough about the “how” and “why” of our own sapience to be able.to.purpose build what is called “strong AI”. I doubt PC imagines Esmay and her cohorts as the result of a deliberate effort to produce machine sapience. I can see where Esmay being sapient could even be problematic under combat conditions. Having a ship which can sing is all well and good but those of us here who have served in the armed forces know that situations arise where a machine has to be operated to destruction in order to accomplish a mission. What if Esmay or one of her cohorts refuses to be piloted to destruction? The result could be major loss of biological lives. But that would require consideration of relative primacy of persons depending upon their origin. All persons are equal but when the chips are down are biological persons “more equal”?
Interesting story, Catman, but I wish you hadn’t opened that particular can of worms.
.. criminal mischief .. the intentional destruction of property.
depending on the wording.. is a key factor,,. one example: if more than one owner,, can not be sent out to be knowingly damaged.. another: homeowner destroys home,, in order to pay less on taxes..
Emay.. in the real world,. till sapience is proved “in court” ‘they’ are a smart machine.!!
Rob, I do not believe that criminal mischief would apply to willfully damaging one’s own property. Other people’s property, certainly, but not one’s own property. Even destruction of jointly held property would not be considered an offense until/unless one of the co-owners complained. So far as I can tell, I am entirely at liberty to take a sledgehammer to my automobile if I choose.so long as in the process I do not create a public nuisance or leave the results as an eyesore afterwards.
Side note: under Texas law criminal mischief against one’s property by another after local sundown is justification for use of deadly force. If I am not mistaken graffiti would fall under the criminal mischief statute. We take property crimes.seriously here in Texas.
hence the “key,, wording” .. but you are mostly correct,, criminal mischief is a grey area,, where they can get you.
your car: IF i see you destroying your car an complain,, criminal mischief.. IF any money is owed/lean, and you destroy car not to pay,, criminal mischief..
Bill, when you are in a war that you might not win, you use men and machines to destruction. AFAIK, the USA armed forces never assigned a man to a suicide mission,
one with _no_ chance of completing the mission and escaping alive, but there were several wars where many men performed jobs with a slim chance of coming home.
When we feared Russian bombers with nukes, there were interceptors with two missiles tipped with small nukes, and an autopilot programmed to ram if the missiles didn’t do
the job. The pilot had a few seconds to bail out, if surviving a bail-out in the stratosphere at supersonic speeds was even possible. And in WWII, many jobs were not suicide, but pretty close:
Carrying a flamethrower made you the target of every enemy rifleman to see you – and you were carrying the means of your own cremation.
A bazooka man _could_ kill a Tiger tank – if he waited under a ridge until the belly of the Tiger was above him.
When you began flying a WWI fighter, your life expectancy was a few weeks.
And even though commanders never ordered it, many men chose a suicide tactic in the heat of battle, when it became the only way to save their comrades.
There are many posthumous Medals of Honor awarded for jumping on a grenade. Some pilots finally won a victory by ramming in mid-air.
Men in many sinking ships stuck to their post in the engine room or to other critical posts until there was no escape for them.
Each of the commanders of tiny sub-chasers at Leyte Gulf chose to attack Japanese battleships just like they had real warships – and were so convincing that the
Japanese backed off until the pesky, but not very dangerous boats were destroyed. This took much longer than it should have because they were firing armor-piercing
explosive shells at boats that weren’t constructed heavy enough to detonate the shells; apparently the Japanese thought only a much bigger ship would act like that!
So if we do build sentient AI for war, I expect we’ll build them to sacrifice themselves when called for. But I would rather avoid the whole issue by not making them sapient,
sentient, or even capable of understanding that their existence ends when they steer the missile into the target. (Not that we’re any closer to achieving any of these
things than we were when I was taking computer science courses 50 years ago.)
Regarding the androids (like Jochi yesterday I prefer the classic sci-fi terms) I can see two problems. First it their manufacture. Clearly there has been some industrial espionage going on and Imogen’s R&D has been penetrated. I suppose we’ll see whether it was a spy or a mole. In any case somebody outside Imogen is using a brand new process “We haven’t even released it to the Navy yet, much less the civilian market.” without authorization. That indicates espionage. Industrial espionage is more common than you might think. Back in the 90s before my lady retired she worked for a small company called DPT Laboratories. They made a whole host of products based upon creams and lotions. They also had a dynamite odor killer. Anyhow they had a guy running the formulation dept. who was an absolute genius with developing and manufacturing lotions and creams. DPT was well known in the industry. They were OEM manufacturers for a large number of OTC products. When I worked for Caremark Pharmacies in customer service a huge chunk of their topical formulary were made by DPT for various named companies.
Anyway, at one point Bed Bath & Beyond approached DPT to develop and manufacture a line of bath creams. Contracts were signed and DPT’s R&D got to work. They did several small scale production runs and sent the results to BB&B. BB&B liked the results and asked for more limited production runs. Note: BB&B was paying for all this but DPT wasn’t making much profit choosing to recover costs during production. Anyhow response from BB&B was favorable but somehow execs at BB&B would not pull the trigger. Then they abandoned the project entirely. THEN the products started showing up in BB&B stores. BB&B owned the labels but DPT owned the products. It turned out that BB&B never intended to have DPT manufacture their line of bath lotions. They just wanted DPT to make enough for their chemists to reverse engineer them. In the end DPT sued the hell out of BB&B. AND the product were not nearly as good as what DPT would have made.
Okay so we have android bodies being illegally made. I also suspect that the process to produce strong AIs such as Esmay is proprietary. If these androids are sapient then their AI cores were produced illegally. Whether or not the androids are “people” will have to be determined in a court of law. Producing androids for any sort of labor would not – necessarily – be against empire law. Under empire law, the state’s only legitimate function is the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud. Manufacturing machines for some purpose would not in itself be illegal. Likewise, physically abusing said constructs would no more be illegal than some guy putting his fist through his nice 80″ television screen. Stupid but not illegal. The only way the androids’ manufacture would be illegal is if it depended upon unlicensed use of proprietary technology which in this case would appear to be the case. Interesting court battle on the horizon.
Now, to the issue of the two androids being “people”. That’s for a court of law to decide. Aaron is the absolute best person around (that we’ve met) to determine if the androids are able to pass a Turing test. I’ve encountered some pretty good “seeming” AIs on the web but I was always able to push them into the weeds. Software – like pretty much everything else – tends to fail under boundary conditions. As long ad you’re driving it down the middle of an empty road most software is fine. It’s when you metaphorically get close to the curb or shoulder that software falls apart. I would expect Aaron to be able to explore whether these constructs truly pass Turing’s muster. On the one hand the fact that they have the wit to call for help mitigates in their favor but it could merely be programmed in behavior in response to damage/malfunction. They clearly are sentient. It remains to be seen whether or not they are sapient.
T’would appear that the horned folk are not the best engineers around. Not exactly sure how taking out a spacecraft’s propulsion would simultaneously take out their powerplant but depending upon how they drew the electrical power for ship’s systems it could be possible. The fact that all three vessels went dark simultaneously would argue that it is a design flaw. Oh, well! Play stupid games; win stupid prizes. Perhaps it never occurred to the horned folk (BTW, Catmen, do they have a name/species designation?) that someone might attack the from the rear and take out their propulsion systems. More concerning is that they so far show no evidence of backup power systems. Only an extremely arrogant engineer designs systems with no redundancy.
Grab the popcorn, boys and girls, it’s gonna get interesting.
Either a major design flaw, or a “let’s-play-dead-and-kill-whoever-approaches” booby trap.
Approach with caution. Test communications first.
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Happy Thanksgiving.!
Next: who is the “they” that just tracked the two androids?
My money is on the owners or agents thereof. Valuable property is missing. It is a safe bet that the owners will try to reacquire. Reckon they’ll expect trouble or will they turn out to be bully boys figuring on intimidation winning the day?
Big “No D’Uh!” there, Bill.
I guess I should have been more specific.
Yes, the “they” would be the owners or agents of the owners.
BUT….are they someone we’ve seen before on these pages? If so, who in particular?
Or are these new players on The Gentle Wolf stage?
Pure guess: I expect they will be new players in the employ of someone we have seen before. Maybe that shadowy figure I think we’ve seen only once from the back. Less likely the CSA, Wong Empire, Hawaiians or other foreign interests. But the employer could be someone entirely new too.