Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

How old are the humanoid AI chassis?

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keithcurtis:
I was binging some older strips and had totally forgotten that Winslow's current body is not his first experience with a humaniform chassis. He briefly inhabited a prototype that debuted in this strip (1010). I'm not sure how much in-universe time passes in QC, but it seems like the world has moved awfully quickly from a model that surprised and shocked the entire cast as something hitherto unprecedented, to a world in which humanoid model chassis are fairly commonplace. Even May has one, third rate as it is, and Bubbles certainly has had one long enough to have a history with it in addition to it being extremely advanced. Was this addressed anywhere in a story line or post from Jeph? Or is this just a matter of authorial revision of the concept?

Apologies if this has been discussed before. I'm still learning the forum.

Mr_Rose:
Apart from anything else there have been several unmarked time-skips since that model was introduced so your idea of how long it’s been may need adjusting if you haven’t already accounted for them.

Other things to consider:
Bubbles is explicitly a prototype created with military funding (i.e. throw money at the problem until it goes away or Congress objects) and probably represents the grandparent of several technologies now in consumer hands and such projects are typically several years ahead of what is state-of-the-art even for early adopters.
Just how common are humanoid bodies anyway? Yes we occasionally see them in street views in more recent strips but they simply weren’t there before the fight club arc – it’s possible they were only developed commercially after the AI rights act created both a market for them and a whole bevy of new consumers wanting to buy them for personal use. History is littered with technologies that existed long before anyone thought to put them in a mass market device.
The other thing to consider is that the robot boyfriend was explicitly exactly that – something to help Hannelore with her issues created by a well-meaning but completely daft father who lives on a space station with the rest of his mad-scientist buddies – there is an interpretation of the cast’s reactions that is more ‘whoa that’s weird/messed-up/dumb’ rather than ‘whoa that’s new/amazing’ and, having gone back and re-read that arc I’m pretty sure I know which one I favour.

Undrneath:
Since the early comics Jeph has retconed things that that Gordon and an early human chassis were around when Marten got Pintsize.

TheEvilDog:
Bear in mind that what first appears commercially could be appearing several years or even decades after what was first produced in research.

In robotics, the humanoid form is considered to be one of the holy grails of development because of the many, many, many challenges the form presents, not least that its not a particularly stable form to move about it. Combine that with years of research, development and refinement, the oldest humanoid chassis could be quite old, even by AI standards.

Mr_Rose:
Also, what are you defining as humanoid? The generically human-shaped ‘tin man’ type chassis like Punchbot, or the much more humaniform ones like Momo or Winslow?

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