Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
AI Rights
Is it cold in here?:
There's a long approval and certification cycle on getting new technology installed in jetliners. It would be entirely possible for AIs to have been around for ten years and still not have been pilots.
You have to be 35 years old to run for US President. Does this mean that AIs still don't have equal rights?
DSL:
If the "freeze the design" aspect of any big technological undertaking works in QCverse as it does here, it's possible for there to be a tech lag. Retrofitting jetliners might be seen as prohibitively expensive, so that a QCverse 767 might lag technologically behind what's available at QC Radio Shack or QCBest Buy or wherever Marigold and Momo go shopping.
The Space Shuttle's computers lagged behind what was commercially available for a long time (and I heard an editor for Aviation Week talk about how Columbia was many years obsolete the day of first flight; she got some upgrades later) because of the cost-vs-benefit of upgrading the specs in mid-build.
jwhouk:
The Space Shuttle's main computers were less powerful than the laptops some of the astronauts brought on board the ship in the last few flights, if memory serves.
EDIT: Literally. 1 MB of memory vs. any laptop with 4 GB RAM & 160 GB Hard Drive. Of course, the Shuttle didn't need to download music from iTunes or play Metal Gear Solid.
DSL:
... of course, what's to stop a human-form AI with the requisite expertise from being the pilot on a "normally" fitted-out aircraft? I seem to recall Asimov (I think it was Asimov; he and Clarke were who I read back in the day, and The Good Doctor talked about robots way more than did Sir Arthur*) making the argument for " humaniform" robots on that basis: Why fit out a tractor, or car, or plane, or spacecraft, with brains of its own when a robot or AI the size and shape of an adult human could operate any or all of them?
*Clarke's robots tended to be shaped like glass pyramids, or oversized dominoes ...
Is it cold in here?:
Because brains turned out to be the cheap part.
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