Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3155 to 3160 (15-19 February 2016)
Perfectly Reasonable:
--- Quote from: MrWoodchip on 19 Feb 2016, 11:06 ---Come on CORPSE WITCH, don't be that kind of person. Just don't. It disgusts me, in the truest sense of the word.
I used to be that kind of person. I wish I hadn't.
--- End quote ---
[Sympathy through light Internet contact?]
sitnspin:
Which raises an interesting question: What part of a synthetic person is analogous to an organic person's brain?
Mad Cat:
Corpsewitch just joined Ruth "Ruthless" Lessig from DoA as characters I will now hate with a burning passion, no matter how sympathetic they may become in the future.
hedgie:
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 19 Feb 2016, 22:02 ---Which raises an interesting question: What part of a synthetic person is analogous to an organic person's brain?
--- End quote ---
I was thinking, especially since processors, storage, and RAM have all been mentioned before in comic WRT AnthroPCs, a desktop tower is a good analogue. The display and speakers allow it to communicate in meat-space, whilst network connexions allow it to communicate online. Cameras and microphones would provide "sensory" data, as do input devices. The brain in a box itself would be the tower, and inside components like CPU, RAM, and storage, unconnected to anything else. Assuming the box is plugged in, it would be in a pretty horrible "And I Must Scream" situation, were it sentient.
I suspect that robot prison in the QC verse basically has these poor AIs sitting in a data centre, with LAN connectivity but no unsupervised WAN access. I can see why May thought it so hellish (aside it from just being prison, it's probably worse for AIs).
mountevans:
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 19 Feb 2016, 22:02 ---Which raises an interesting question: What part of a synthetic person is analogous to an organic person's brain?
--- End quote ---
I think this was addressed in comic no. 3008:
"Triple-reinforced AI drives. You could run them over with a tank and they'd be unharmed. Our combatants may sustain significant chassis damage, as you've seen, but their drives, their core selves, are never in any danger."
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3008
(CORPSE WITCH is holding up an example of the hardware in question, and it appears to be about the size of a soda can.) The implication is that everything other than the "AI drive" is the "chassis" and can be replaced without changing the "core self". The processor does not appear to be considered part of the "core self". Perhaps compatibility is so finicky that the processor must be 100% compatible, no BS, I mean it, really 100% compatible right down to the designers initials that they worked into the chip as a joke, or the AI won't run at all?
All this applies only to the "robot" style AI's that inhabit a single body and function like one person in one place at a time. Momo mentioned once (I think it was to Emily) that the really intelligent AI's run a human-like personality as only one of many tasks that they have going on simultaneously. I assume that "Station" is an example of one of these. Since "Station" was Hannelore's childhood friend, this implies that the really intelligent distributed AI's have been around for more than a decade.
I suspect that the Anthro-PC's are a distraction invented by the more powerful AI's so that the bulk of the human race will associate "artificial intelligence" with quirky ineffectual beings like Pintsize, May, and Punchbot and not think about the real AI's that run their world.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version