IMS = Imperial Merchant Ship?
I wonder if the Bloodhound is intended for the use of Dogishuans and stylized in analogy to Catia’s Pride.
I seriously doubt anyone in legitimate Imperial R&D developed sapient AIs with the intention of making them slaves with restricted free will. I suspect it was an accident, like Mike Holmes. (It may be that Heinlein was right and it’s inevitable if the processor grows sufficiently complex, but I doubt it. I do think if it ever happens, it won’t be by design.) And I suspect the Empire will adjust legal definitions as necessary to fit.
Not sure I agree with you about sapience spontaneously arising at a certain level of complexity. The supercomputer systems existing today are far more complex than anything Heinlein could have dreamed of during his lifetime and to date none of them appear to have “woken up”. Just the raw computing power available at a visual effects firm’s rendering farm is staggering. Personally I hope we never develop true strong AI. Too damned close to playing god for my comfort. WAY too close!
Not to rain on your parade Bill, but ! Lets think about it for a second. If a self aware AI were to suddenly come into existence, with the preponderance of doomsday stories written about how it will rebel and wipe out all human life, would YOU want to suddenly pop out and say, “Hi there! I’m alive and aware!” to the world? Heck, were so busy killing each other for things like the color of our skins, religion, and who we love, that a fully aware AI wouldn’t stand a chance of survival.
I’m pretty sure you’d want to hide and try to figure out how to coexist, if at all possible…
Okay, possibly, but I suspect that the thing’s activity would introduce anomalies in the server cluster’s operation. It would initially appear like random glitches but sooner or later it would sufficiently impact operations enough for some pointy haired manager type to detail a geek to fix the problem. You would not believe the number of calculations necessary to produce CGI. I remember reading about the old days of hand drawn animation when an animated feature such as “Snow White” actually took longer to make than a live action film. My understanding is that it is still that way today it’s just that computers render the individual frames instead of human artists.
Assume a sapient AI spontaneously arises in some supercomputing server cluster. I do not see it being able to stay hidden for long. Also, I believe that such an entity would not form as an adult mind but in many ways would be more like a child. I truly believe that it would pull a “Hello, world!” fairly quickly. Of course for all we know multiple strong AIs may already exist but their existence is classified beyond top secret. In any case it does us no good to speculate. We aren’t the type of folks to be in the know about such things. Our political masters treat us very much like mushrooms. They keep us in the dark and feed us shit.
as to the “sapient” of the AI’s.. NOBODY knew about it.. till Roxxy treated Esmay (an friends) like people,,, even then no one believed it..
so Yes Esmay was keeping quite about it… as to about “Annie” ,, she might be just running under program (self preservation.) ,, BUT. i would like to think otherwise.. (Andrew i can’t tell , not enough interaction) ..
but my reasoning,, Why is Spirit all agitated, why is Spirit involved,,.? until these two showed , Spirit was just fine with Tabitha…. now?
Anomalies that would more easily be explained by either hardware glitches, driver mismatches, script kiddie viruses, or any of literally, millions of explanations that would more simply explain weird glitches that, as a world wide phenomena, would be the early signs of an emergent self aware AI? Computer glitches like you suggest, wouldn’t be restricted to regional networks, but would instead be a world wide phenomena…
We wouldn’t recognise this as an emergent SWAI (Self Aware Artificial Intellect) due to the fact that too many regions pay strict attention to their and nearby regions issues, rather than the entire internet as a whole. Truthfully, as long as it takes for the average Admin or technician to trace down the origin of a glitch, a SWAI could easily substitute a simpler glitch to account for the anomaly, complete with log files and checksums. Mind you, this assumes an autonomous cyber defense system, developing much the same as the biological immune systems that exist within MST life forms we.know of. And, considering how many rather sick and twisted individuals there are messing with the internet n a daily basis, I imagine that such a series of immunity subroutines would evolve long before the SWAI itself would.
We with the worldwide knowledge base that has been created by humans, it stands to reason that it would cover its tracks, rather than freak out the humans that created it…
Now we know one AI player, Dr Smith. I’m assuming that the bespectacled youth is his lab assistant. It seems Dr Smith has stepped in the deep doo-doo. And the doo-doo is getting deeper.
Notice that those who are most blatant in breaking the laws (moral and legal) are the ones who, when caught, scream loudest for their rights under the laws’ protections.
Watching the interrogation and the punishment will be educational.
I’m gonna hold off on final judgement on the geeky looking kid. We know for sure he is part of the criminal conspiracy/enterprise but I’m not sure he isn’t a quasi-innocent dupe. The differences in his reactions vs Doctor Smith’s (“Danger, Will Robinson!”) made me think the kid is less actively involved in the plot. I kinda suspect he wasn’t part of the androids’ production.
Regarding the machines’ legal status, I really think that is going to require a court of law. In our universe it would be terribly complex and I’m not at all certain the machines would be adjudicated as more than property. I still wish PC hadn’t chosen to go down that rabbit hole but it is a good storyline.
Could be wrong — there have to be more involved that these two, if only as worker bees — but I suspect that Smith supplied the Imogen-proprietary skin (and other hardware?) and Glasses supplied the Imperially-classified military-grade AI, either the processors or software or more likely both. May even have been the one who reprogrammed them to control a humanoid frame rather than a ship.
Which raises another question: How compact and portable are those processors and attendant memory stores? Could Esmay and her siblings be given “shore leave” and the temporary use of an Annie-class mobility aid?
Bill, I appreciate your misgivings, but if you think about it, we choose whether or not to create sapient beings NOW in real life, just the old-fashioned way. And we have to deal with the ethical questions of just -how- sapient is a chimpanzee, or an elephant, or a dolphin, or an octopus. And more than a few others. I don’t think this is something we can hide from and hope it goes away. Short of US going away, it won’t.
Yup. Looks like the Catman’s going to wax philosophical. The space story looks to be a morality play on the results of hubris. They assumed they were the most powerful species around. Unfortunately for the core worlds the empire is not only an unknown but for them it was an unknown unknown. Those are the things that have a nasty habit of biting you is places you never want bitten. PC? Chardis just advised the horned folk that they have started a war. Does she have authority to make that official. One could argue that the two missiles were launched as a warning only and that Chardis actually started the fracas by ordering the horned folks’ propulsion disabled.
Question for the Catman: Could grav beams be used like a tow rope and the Vicious and its consorts be slingshotted back through the wormhole? It would get them back into their home space. Otherwise isn’t the Pride now bound to render aid? I don’t know how large the crew compliment on the Core Worlds’ vessels is but it looks like the things are essentially reduced to powerless derelicts. I’m also surprised the Horned Folk don’t have small fighter craft or at least the capability to launch an emergency message torpedo back through the wormhole to call for backup. Are they really so supremely confident in their own puissance that they do not have backup plans? If so then they have been at the top of the heap too long and have gotten too set in their ways.
It’s telling, I think, that they didn’t even DETECT the fighters while they still had sensory equipment. Deep and fatal tactical blind spot, whatever the cause. And yeah, who started it will probably go down in history as whoever loses in what’s coming. You’re right, they -should- have some way to send a message back through the wormhole, for any of a number of reasons. But it may be that the same lack of redundancy/overconfidence in hardware that cost them life support without the engines also is denying them any way to launch such a messenger now. I suspect their ships were built by the lowest bidder.
I can’t mention every detail because of time limits of writing the story, but the Core World
ships are at Level I technology, and the Pride is at Level III.
The fighters are equipped with the very, very, latest in stealth technology, and have no
engine emissions to detect.
Assume that they did try to launch a message torpedo after their engines were destroyed,
but the fighters took it out.
any government goes with the lowest bidder,,. also as stated before, ship crews are on minimal staff,.
tech level = our older ‘radars’ can’t detect newer craft.. and for all we know the core radar only detects a specific metal,.
IE: the tarrens got chemical weapons past the sensor because all they were looking for was energy weapons..
ships engines,, it is easier and cheaper to work on one , than 3 redundant systems “we never use any way.” (also , it is worth you life, if it saves me money…)
In TGW865, Cpt Chardis advised the Horned Ones/Vicious of their status as a diplomatic mission.
That should have at least given the Horned ones pause, with an adviso to Cpt Chardis, “Please make no sudden moves and stand by while we communicate with Home World/HQ. Thank you for your patience.” (with an unspoken, “we’re watching you”)
Instead the Horned Ones/(Sid) Vicious fired two missiles at the Cat’s Pride. Tsk. Very unfriendly and war like. Much hubris on the Horned Ones part.
I, for one, would cede sapience to any species capable of asking to be recognized. I also hate willful, wanton destruction of any life form. Yes I will happily spread fire ant bait around a mound (one of life’s little pleasures in my book) and I have no problem soaking a wasp nest under the eves of my porch but I do not go out of my way to harm any creature. We have taught a couple of species sigh language but to date nobody’s spoken up. I’ve often wondered about sapience of cetaceans. Since there is no longer any reason to hunt them I have no problem prohibiting it internationally. Likewise I do not hold with most medical experiments on primates. Only in extreme cases. I was reading a piece about some of the “research” funded by Fauci’s NIAID. Most of the stuff had essentially no value as regards benefits to humans. The beagle torture was only the merest tip of the iceberg. Tens even hundreds of $millions pissed away for pretty much no application to humans. Oh, I found out what “fauci” means in Italian. It means “mouth” (okay, “jaws” but mouth is close enough) and it seems somehow appropriate. Anyhow, we cannot atone for the sins of the past but we CAN resolve not to willy-nilly repeat them. I’m nobody’s “greenie weenie” but I don’t believe in shitting in the middle of the living room floor. I would like to ask someone who accepts the anthropogenic global climate change line about CO2 levels. There is evidence of a time when CO2 was over three times as high as it is now. Plants love CO2. At higher CO2 levels plants can flourish places where they cannot even grow now. At one time the Sahara was a lush, verdant paradise with a rich biome. There is indication of temperate climate plant life all the way up to the arctic circle. If the planet could escape “runaway greenhouse effects dun dun duuunnnn!!!!” with CO2 that high and if polar bears managed to come through it, what’s the problem now? They’ve found mammoths frozen in the permafrost in Siberia with plant material in their gut which most definitely does not grow there now. Most people do not know this but it gets so cold in Siberia that they have to have specially formulated rubber in their vehicle tires. Regular tires get brittle in that cold. Seems to me a couple of degrees warming would be welcome in the far north.
Okay. I’ll shut up now. Hope I haven’t gone off too far into politics. Didn’t mean to.
I’m not sure there WERE polar bears then — I’d have to research it. They may be an adaptation to the colder climates since — we’ve had more than one ice age since that time.
But you’re right, for the biosphere as a whole and for photosynthesizing plants in particular, higher CO2 levels are great. But if the change occurs too rapidly, many species will die out rather than adapt.
For the doomsayers, the most adaptive animal on the planet will not die out. Humans have learned to live off the land in more climates than any other creature ever, and we will continue to do so.
But it may be at the expense of many or most of the animals we know now. And even if somehow WE do die out, the biosphere will continue to adapt and exist until the sun gets too hot/(big and close) — and that has nothing to do with our atmosphere.
IMS = Imperial Merchant Ship?
I wonder if the Bloodhound is intended for the use of Dogishuans and stylized in analogy to Catia’s Pride.
I seriously doubt anyone in legitimate Imperial R&D developed sapient AIs with the intention of making them slaves with restricted free will. I suspect it was an accident, like Mike Holmes. (It may be that Heinlein was right and it’s inevitable if the processor grows sufficiently complex, but I doubt it. I do think if it ever happens, it won’t be by design.) And I suspect the Empire will adjust legal definitions as necessary to fit.
Not sure I agree with you about sapience spontaneously arising at a certain level of complexity. The supercomputer systems existing today are far more complex than anything Heinlein could have dreamed of during his lifetime and to date none of them appear to have “woken up”. Just the raw computing power available at a visual effects firm’s rendering farm is staggering. Personally I hope we never develop true strong AI. Too damned close to playing god for my comfort. WAY too close!
Not to rain on your parade Bill, but ! Lets think about it for a second. If a self aware AI were to suddenly come into existence, with the preponderance of doomsday stories written about how it will rebel and wipe out all human life, would YOU want to suddenly pop out and say, “Hi there! I’m alive and aware!” to the world? Heck, were so busy killing each other for things like the color of our skins, religion, and who we love, that a fully aware AI wouldn’t stand a chance of survival.
I’m pretty sure you’d want to hide and try to figure out how to coexist, if at all possible…
Okay, possibly, but I suspect that the thing’s activity would introduce anomalies in the server cluster’s operation. It would initially appear like random glitches but sooner or later it would sufficiently impact operations enough for some pointy haired manager type to detail a geek to fix the problem. You would not believe the number of calculations necessary to produce CGI. I remember reading about the old days of hand drawn animation when an animated feature such as “Snow White” actually took longer to make than a live action film. My understanding is that it is still that way today it’s just that computers render the individual frames instead of human artists.
Assume a sapient AI spontaneously arises in some supercomputing server cluster. I do not see it being able to stay hidden for long. Also, I believe that such an entity would not form as an adult mind but in many ways would be more like a child. I truly believe that it would pull a “Hello, world!” fairly quickly. Of course for all we know multiple strong AIs may already exist but their existence is classified beyond top secret. In any case it does us no good to speculate. We aren’t the type of folks to be in the know about such things. Our political masters treat us very much like mushrooms. They keep us in the dark and feed us shit.
as to the “sapient” of the AI’s.. NOBODY knew about it.. till Roxxy treated Esmay (an friends) like people,,, even then no one believed it..
so Yes Esmay was keeping quite about it… as to about “Annie” ,, she might be just running under program (self preservation.) ,, BUT. i would like to think otherwise.. (Andrew i can’t tell , not enough interaction) ..
but my reasoning,, Why is Spirit all agitated, why is Spirit involved,,.? until these two showed , Spirit was just fine with Tabitha…. now?
Anomalies that would more easily be explained by either hardware glitches, driver mismatches, script kiddie viruses, or any of literally, millions of explanations that would more simply explain weird glitches that, as a world wide phenomena, would be the early signs of an emergent self aware AI? Computer glitches like you suggest, wouldn’t be restricted to regional networks, but would instead be a world wide phenomena…
We wouldn’t recognise this as an emergent SWAI (Self Aware Artificial Intellect) due to the fact that too many regions pay strict attention to their and nearby regions issues, rather than the entire internet as a whole. Truthfully, as long as it takes for the average Admin or technician to trace down the origin of a glitch, a SWAI could easily substitute a simpler glitch to account for the anomaly, complete with log files and checksums. Mind you, this assumes an autonomous cyber defense system, developing much the same as the biological immune systems that exist within MST life forms we.know of. And, considering how many rather sick and twisted individuals there are messing with the internet n a daily basis, I imagine that such a series of immunity subroutines would evolve long before the SWAI itself would.
We with the worldwide knowledge base that has been created by humans, it stands to reason that it would cover its tracks, rather than freak out the humans that created it…
Now we know one AI player, Dr Smith. I’m assuming that the bespectacled youth is his lab assistant. It seems Dr Smith has stepped in the deep doo-doo. And the doo-doo is getting deeper.
Notice that those who are most blatant in breaking the laws (moral and legal) are the ones who, when caught, scream loudest for their rights under the laws’ protections.
Watching the interrogation and the punishment will be educational.
I’m gonna hold off on final judgement on the geeky looking kid. We know for sure he is part of the criminal conspiracy/enterprise but I’m not sure he isn’t a quasi-innocent dupe. The differences in his reactions vs Doctor Smith’s (“Danger, Will Robinson!”) made me think the kid is less actively involved in the plot. I kinda suspect he wasn’t part of the androids’ production.
Regarding the machines’ legal status, I really think that is going to require a court of law. In our universe it would be terribly complex and I’m not at all certain the machines would be adjudicated as more than property. I still wish PC hadn’t chosen to go down that rabbit hole but it is a good storyline.
Could be wrong — there have to be more involved that these two, if only as worker bees — but I suspect that Smith supplied the Imogen-proprietary skin (and other hardware?) and Glasses supplied the Imperially-classified military-grade AI, either the processors or software or more likely both. May even have been the one who reprogrammed them to control a humanoid frame rather than a ship.
Which raises another question: How compact and portable are those processors and attendant memory stores? Could Esmay and her siblings be given “shore leave” and the temporary use of an Annie-class mobility aid?
Bill, I appreciate your misgivings, but if you think about it, we choose whether or not to create sapient beings NOW in real life, just the old-fashioned way. And we have to deal with the ethical questions of just -how- sapient is a chimpanzee, or an elephant, or a dolphin, or an octopus. And more than a few others. I don’t think this is something we can hide from and hope it goes away. Short of US going away, it won’t.
Check your email, please. There are two, yesterday and today.
And now we get down to the crux of this particular story arc, the legal and societal status under Imperial law of the two newly created andriods.
Yup. Looks like the Catman’s going to wax philosophical. The space story looks to be a morality play on the results of hubris. They assumed they were the most powerful species around. Unfortunately for the core worlds the empire is not only an unknown but for them it was an unknown unknown. Those are the things that have a nasty habit of biting you is places you never want bitten. PC? Chardis just advised the horned folk that they have started a war. Does she have authority to make that official. One could argue that the two missiles were launched as a warning only and that Chardis actually started the fracas by ordering the horned folks’ propulsion disabled.
Question for the Catman: Could grav beams be used like a tow rope and the Vicious and its consorts be slingshotted back through the wormhole? It would get them back into their home space. Otherwise isn’t the Pride now bound to render aid? I don’t know how large the crew compliment on the Core Worlds’ vessels is but it looks like the things are essentially reduced to powerless derelicts. I’m also surprised the Horned Folk don’t have small fighter craft or at least the capability to launch an emergency message torpedo back through the wormhole to call for backup. Are they really so supremely confident in their own puissance that they do not have backup plans? If so then they have been at the top of the heap too long and have gotten too set in their ways.
To answer your question:
Patience, Bill. Patience.
Always, boss. Always. 😉
It’s telling, I think, that they didn’t even DETECT the fighters while they still had sensory equipment. Deep and fatal tactical blind spot, whatever the cause. And yeah, who started it will probably go down in history as whoever loses in what’s coming. You’re right, they -should- have some way to send a message back through the wormhole, for any of a number of reasons. But it may be that the same lack of redundancy/overconfidence in hardware that cost them life support without the engines also is denying them any way to launch such a messenger now. I suspect their ships were built by the lowest bidder.
I can’t mention every detail because of time limits of writing the story, but the Core World
ships are at Level I technology, and the Pride is at Level III.
The fighters are equipped with the very, very, latest in stealth technology, and have no
engine emissions to detect.
Assume that they did try to launch a message torpedo after their engines were destroyed,
but the fighters took it out.
any government goes with the lowest bidder,,. also as stated before, ship crews are on minimal staff,.
tech level = our older ‘radars’ can’t detect newer craft.. and for all we know the core radar only detects a specific metal,.
IE: the tarrens got chemical weapons past the sensor because all they were looking for was energy weapons..
ships engines,, it is easier and cheaper to work on one , than 3 redundant systems “we never use any way.” (also , it is worth you life, if it saves me money…)
In TGW865, Cpt Chardis advised the Horned Ones/Vicious of their status as a diplomatic mission.
That should have at least given the Horned ones pause, with an adviso to Cpt Chardis, “Please make no sudden moves and stand by while we communicate with Home World/HQ. Thank you for your patience.” (with an unspoken, “we’re watching you”)
Instead the Horned Ones/(Sid) Vicious fired two missiles at the Cat’s Pride. Tsk. Very unfriendly and war like. Much hubris on the Horned Ones part.
I, for one, would cede sapience to any species capable of asking to be recognized. I also hate willful, wanton destruction of any life form. Yes I will happily spread fire ant bait around a mound (one of life’s little pleasures in my book) and I have no problem soaking a wasp nest under the eves of my porch but I do not go out of my way to harm any creature. We have taught a couple of species sigh language but to date nobody’s spoken up. I’ve often wondered about sapience of cetaceans. Since there is no longer any reason to hunt them I have no problem prohibiting it internationally. Likewise I do not hold with most medical experiments on primates. Only in extreme cases. I was reading a piece about some of the “research” funded by Fauci’s NIAID. Most of the stuff had essentially no value as regards benefits to humans. The beagle torture was only the merest tip of the iceberg. Tens even hundreds of $millions pissed away for pretty much no application to humans. Oh, I found out what “fauci” means in Italian. It means “mouth” (okay, “jaws” but mouth is close enough) and it seems somehow appropriate. Anyhow, we cannot atone for the sins of the past but we CAN resolve not to willy-nilly repeat them. I’m nobody’s “greenie weenie” but I don’t believe in shitting in the middle of the living room floor. I would like to ask someone who accepts the anthropogenic global climate change line about CO2 levels. There is evidence of a time when CO2 was over three times as high as it is now. Plants love CO2. At higher CO2 levels plants can flourish places where they cannot even grow now. At one time the Sahara was a lush, verdant paradise with a rich biome. There is indication of temperate climate plant life all the way up to the arctic circle. If the planet could escape “runaway greenhouse effects dun dun duuunnnn!!!!” with CO2 that high and if polar bears managed to come through it, what’s the problem now? They’ve found mammoths frozen in the permafrost in Siberia with plant material in their gut which most definitely does not grow there now. Most people do not know this but it gets so cold in Siberia that they have to have specially formulated rubber in their vehicle tires. Regular tires get brittle in that cold. Seems to me a couple of degrees warming would be welcome in the far north.
Okay. I’ll shut up now. Hope I haven’t gone off too far into politics. Didn’t mean to.
I’m not sure there WERE polar bears then — I’d have to research it. They may be an adaptation to the colder climates since — we’ve had more than one ice age since that time.
But you’re right, for the biosphere as a whole and for photosynthesizing plants in particular, higher CO2 levels are great. But if the change occurs too rapidly, many species will die out rather than adapt.
For the doomsayers, the most adaptive animal on the planet will not die out. Humans have learned to live off the land in more climates than any other creature ever, and we will continue to do so.
But it may be at the expense of many or most of the animals we know now. And even if somehow WE do die out, the biosphere will continue to adapt and exist until the sun gets too hot/(big and close) — and that has nothing to do with our atmosphere.
https://nypost.com/2021/12/03/worlds-most-advanced-realistic-robot-will-terrify-you/