Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
On the psychology of Artificial Intelligence
ReindeerFlotilla:
Now, if you want a really deep question...
Google is a thing in the QCverse. AI handle all sorts of supermundane tasks, like "Toaster."
Google's core product is connecting users to the information they want. Why wouldn't AI be doing that job? (Remember, Toaster.) So everything you google in the QC verse is probably examined, in detail, by multiple AI.
And they probably judge you for it.
All sleep mode is is stopping the disk I/O and CPU. Power is still sent to the memory. So everything in memory is still active. Human sleep is not like that. Indeed the human brain isn't like that. Parts of it actually turn right off. It seems this is required for flushing waste products out. Human sleep is, at best, halfway between PC sleep and PC hibernate, where the content of memory is written to non-volatile storage and all power is shut down.
Hibernate is not really any different from the copy to a new chassis question. There's no actual reason that you couldn't hibernate your laptop, copy it's state to another laptop, boot that and start up right where you left off on a different computer (and in fact you can do this if you set up things just right. {Trust me. I get paid for this stuff}). There's continuity if you did that, yet you still powered the computers down completely (something that doesn't happen in human sleep. You may lose all consciousness--no dreams--but at no point is your whole brain "off." Just parts. This is actually only a little different than being awake).
Half Empty Coffee Cup:
Fascinating. (Also, might it be relevant to link the GKC strip where the old-old robot talks about how being turned off is like death, and how life is motion?)
Perhaps they developed a state closer to human sleep specifically for AIs over the course of the evolution of the basic program. Idle speculation, since this isn't addressed, but if AI architecture is sufficiently like human intelligence, this may be a feature included as part of the emergent and not-understood properties of AI.
ReindeerFlotilla:
I expect so, as the APC's have been known to suggest sleep, but they don't need it. A sleep mode would probably be useful for system maintenance, but not necessary.
Is it cold in here?:
Momo said once that she didn't need sleep but Jeph has said out-of-comic that everything intelligent needs sleep.
Oilman:
Humans sleep because they physically need to, eventually. They have mechanisms to postpone that, both intrinsic and extrinsic, but they can only be used for short periods and exact a considerable cost longer-term. There are psychological and mental functiins tgat happen during sleep, but sleep per se is a physical function.
Anthros and AIs don't seem to have that requirement. Momo sat on the dresser, or the bed, watching Marigold sleep., and also told her she could work 24 hours, not needing sleep. Pintsize doesn't appear to sleep. May stated that she could power-down into a dormant state at will, and revive at will. None of them have ever been seen to observe any sort of charging regime, although Pintsize has referred to "delicious alternating current".
So I'd guess that Anthros and AI use periodic down-time for back-up and maintenance functiins, and existing in an interface with humans on a 24-hour cycle provides a fairly obvious routine for that
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