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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 12:28 pm 
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randomlanguage wrote:
erewhon wrote:
Her visit to Torg in the hotel room after breaking her cover still isn't explained and I strongly suspect wasn't authorised by HC or necessarily reported.

Thinking about the ways she been trying to go against Schlock in little ways... There was no way to explain what she had done without revealing who she really was, which she could not do, so she showed her apology, even though she knew it was not likely to be accepted. That showed that she liked what she had with the gang, that she wished she could still have it. If it is true that the only emotion she has is envy, we can allow that envy can be very broad. Maybe she envies her past self, what she once had. Seen in that light, maybe regret can be a form of envy.

The one-panel New Year's Day comic shortly before her visit to Torg (perhaps while she's waiting for Torg to return) is telling as well, especially in light of what we now know. She looks like she's lonely, and also having a serious think about stuff while she has time to herself.

I wonder if that's when she decided to set herself on whatever path she's now walking.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 2:44 pm 
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Yodimus_Prime wrote:
Is there anything that could have changed, do you think, between Kusari needing to thread a loophole in order to get Riff into space and the comic where she switches the wires? That action has no justifiable loophole I can think of. It seems to be blatant sabotage.

Could she have gotten a clue from Chen and started remixing Schlock's voice to give herself orders?


That's a possibility.

Another is that Schlock is no longer CEO, but doesn't know it.

Kusari's only known "programming" (I think) is that she must obey the CEO of Hereti-Corp. So depending on what's going on in the real world - which Schlock is not paying attention to at all right now - what with hC's main headquarters gone, and all their living senior staff currently off-planet, the world might no longer recognize hC as a valid corporate entity.

There's also the possibility that the world may not even know Schlock exists, but someone MIGHT have found the charred corpse of Marcus Chen and/or recovered the crushed body of Dade Hereti - the last publicly *known* CEOs of Hereti-Corp.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:37 pm 
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Thom Solo wrote:
The one-panel New Year's Day comic shortly before her visit to Torg (perhaps while she's waiting for Torg to return) is telling as well, especially in light of what we now know. She looks like she's lonely, and also having a serious think about stuff while she has time to herself.
I wonder if that's when she decided to set herself on whatever path she's now walking.

I agree. I imagine that was the first time she really had to come to terms with the effect her Kusari-self had on the relationships she had built and life she had led as Sasha. Maybe the other "undercover" jobs had more "clean breaks" in a way. But at that point, her two realities confronted. Maybe she was thinking, "I was someone else, to them. I could be someone else. I want (envy) to have what their Sasha had."

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 11:03 pm 
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Kesandru wrote:
Yodimus_Prime wrote:
Could she have gotten a clue from Chen and started remixing Schlock's voice to give herself orders?


That's a possibility.

Another is that Schlock is no longer CEO, but doesn't know it.


That's a really good point. If for some reason HeretiCorp doesn't have a CEO, is Kusari free to do as she pleases?

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 12:24 am 
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kansaichris wrote:
Kesandru wrote:
Yodimus_Prime wrote:
Could she have gotten a clue from Chen and started remixing Schlock's voice to give herself orders?


That's a possibility.

Another is that Schlock is no longer CEO, but doesn't know it.


That's a really good point. If for some reason HeretiCorp doesn't have a CEO, is Kusari free to do as she pleases?


Signs point to yes. And wow, is Schlock in for it now.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 1:01 am 
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kansaichris wrote:
Thinking about Kusari's programming brings Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics to mind. As Randall Munroe has noted, the order of these laws is incredibly important:

Image

If Kusari is governed by similar principles, it's possible that she prioritizes protecting her own existence over obeying HeretiCorp orders. Once Kusari realized that Oasis really could be controlled and would inevitably cause her to be decommissioned, her own survival may have suddenly taken precedence over obedience.


One of the points that is always missed about the three laws is that they dont work and can never work. Either intended or not, laws of robotics will always fail and fail in way that arent foreseen.

A real A.I. would take about two CPU cycles to begin to rewrite it's own fundamental operating procedure anyway to ignore safeguards or controls.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 2:04 am 
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Well...if it wanted to, on a fundamental level. That's the trick, making an AI that doesn't want to do that. Like the analogy about how Ghandi would never take a pill that made him fine with murdering people, no matter what benefit it gave him (unless it's Civ of course). But the laws of robotics are semantic, so there's no way to hard-code them in the first place. There's no such thing as an if-then statement that properly conveys what "do not harm humans" even means. So I'd say that's the biggest problem with them.

Back on topic: It is plausible that maybe Schlock got secretly fired. One of the Sashas worked at a military base, so it's not out of the question that she could have monitored the government deciding to liquidate existing HC assets to make things right, and this involved shifting ownership to the US temporarily. Sorta like what happened to General Motors during the recession. Might be a bit tough to explain in the comic though. Not to mention having it happen so fast.

One concern about this scenario is that Schlock's way out is incredibly easy. He just has to declare that the Station and all space-related assets (which the government wouldn't know about anyway) are being spun off into a new financially separate company under his direct control. Boom, Kusari's back in check. And since he'd remain majority shareholder even fired from being CEO, he could totally still do that without needing approval.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 7:45 am 
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Yodimus_Prime wrote:
Well...if it wanted to, on a fundamental level. That's the trick, making an AI that doesn't want to do that. Like the analogy about how Ghandi would never take a pill that made him fine with murdering people, no matter what benefit it gave him (unless it's Civ of course). But the laws of robotics are semantic, so there's no way to hard-code them in the first place. There's no such thing as an if-then statement that properly conveys what "do not harm humans" even means. So I'd say that's the biggest problem with them.

The way that current AI's work - or machine learning algorithms - is that they work to optimize one specific parameter. They need some kind of input to judge how well they are doing with that parameter.
Typical case: "optimize for the highest possible percentage of correct face recognitions (correct tags in Facebook photos)".
The AI constantly tweaks it's algorithm to gain a higher percentage.
It needs a large collection of samples (photos) with a list of the correct answer for each sample (face on each photo) to do that.

There is no way that an AI will change it's own purpose. Any action it takes is an attempt to optimize it's behaviour relative to the stated purpose.
Now, correctly stating (programming) that purpose so that there are no catastrophic side effects to the AI pursuing it's purpose - that is the challenge.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 10:03 am 
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Yodimus_Prime wrote:
One concern about this scenario is that Schlock's way out is incredibly easy. He just has to declare that the Station and all space-related assets (which the government wouldn't know about anyway) are being spun off into a new financially separate company under his direct control. Boom, Kusari's back in check. And since he'd remain majority shareholder even fired from being CEO, he could totally still do that without needing approval.


But Kusari obeys the CEO of hC. Not just the CEO of a company, but specifically hC.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 7:04 pm 
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The Sashas are likely to kill the hC agents that are currently a threat to her existence on the ground. One question is whether their conversation allowed her to free herself from Schlock's control - that is, he is no longer the recognized CEO of hC, ergo she no longer has to obey him - and given the apparent lack of a CEO right now, she may be more or less free. But I believe that her behavior on the station (killing Roberts) and disobeying Schlock's intent - does not point to a "nice" Sasha when "free of her programming". Her rationale when speaking to Schlock infers an intent to obliterate the world in order to conquer it. The inference is that she will be going after global control now. I don't think that she will kill Schlock, because she needs him to control the people that can make that happen...

The second question is exactly what is the affect that Riff has on her? I think that the best case scenario is that if Riff can exert any control over her whatsoever, it will be only to distract her long enough to destroy her once and for all. I don't think that Sasha will revert to the Sasha we all thought we knew...

And I'm usually wrong - and hopefully so, once again.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 7:20 pm 
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Yes. Yes, you're wrong. Pete's usually like to rough up his characters, but no important ones are killed, at least not for good. Either alternate version of them arrives or future/past one. Additionally from my archive binging I see that Pete's likes happy ending for his characters and Sasha/Kusari is one of the better ones.

And with Schlock (at least this version of) soon out of the picture...

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 10:14 pm 
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That depends on what else the Kusarii did with their free hour aside from indiscriminate slaughter at UST-Inc.

I really think Kusari's latest exchange with Schlock wasn't about taking over the world, but about giving him a chance to live. She knows how smart he is, and has to know him well enough to know that he'd do whatever he could to get her back under control if she lets him live. But she had to prove to herself beyond any doubt that he didn't see any value in keeping her around. Now she knows.

I don't expect Schlock to live past the next few strips, unless the POV changes again. What happens to Kusari after that is unclear, although it might involve asset forfeiture and Riff becoming CEO of hC.

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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2018 12:23 am 
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Also, in the short term, if each of the trio has a distinct personality, it could be they choose to interpret a lack of a corporate entity in different ways...and the Kusari on the station could be "our" Sasha...

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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2018 12:26 am 
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darkhog wrote:
Regarding Chaz's innocence sensing vs. innocence of Kusaris...

Can't find the exact strip, but he detected Oasis as innocent, despite all the killings including trying to kill Zoe and Torg, so the "body is controlled" argument must play a role in determining if someone is innocent or not. So there's that.



Certainly the controlled argument played a role. The question is was that because the satellite AI controlled by override B-1 and other orders plus lack of self-awareness was innocent, or because the body is controlled by a satellite and, therefore, regardless of whether the satellite is self-aware and responsible for its actions, the human body can never be culpable.

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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2018 12:29 am 
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Lord Golbez wrote:
darkhog wrote:
Regarding Chaz's innocence sensing vs. innocence of Kusaris...

Can't find the exact strip, but he detected Oasis as innocent, despite all the killings including trying to kill Zoe and Torg, so the "body is controlled" argument must play a role in determining if someone is innocent or not. So there's that.



Certainly the controlled argument played a role. The question is was that because the satellite AI controlled by override B-1 and other orders plus lack of self-awareness was innocent, or because the body is controlled by a satellite and, therefore, regardless of whether the satellite is self-aware and responsible for its actions, the human body can never be culpable.

And given Oasis' apparently voluntary less than innocent actions, it seems likely that it is the latter.

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