Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT strips 3836-3840 (24 to 28 September 2018)

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sitnspin:
You can't fix a broken system with the tools of that system. A "good" cop is not going to fix the department from the inside. It's rotten to the core. The whole thing needs dismantled and rebuilt from scratch.

Tova:
And how can you do it without ending up exactly where we are today?

Sorflakne:
The best of friends call you Fucker or Goddammit.

Morituri:
I suppose that the QC-verse is logically inconsistent unless something is keeping AI mentally in line enough with humans (in terms of social instinct and empathy as well as intellectual capability) to be a compatible part of a society dominated by humans.

Emotions as we understand them - empathy in particular - are an adaptive response; they are how it feels when our brain reconfigures itself (along with our bodies) to enhance and/or suppress exactly the constellation of abilities needed to survive the next few moments, days, or weeks. 

AI would have "emergent" emotion for the same reason, but unless their processors have the same, or very similar, survival costs associated with regions being active or suppressed and bodies with needs for energy served by similar physiological responses, there is no reason why their emotions would resemble ours at all.  If they are not made to be tribally cooperative with individual adaptive specialization the way we are, then empathy would not confer on them the same adaptive advantages it confers on humans, and would be different. 

This is completely separate from the question most people think about with strong AI's, of a potential intellect that outstrips human intellect by orders of magnitude; the question of whether the AI are emotionally compatible with human society is just as important.    And why have AI not gone that path in the QC-verse? 

More or less, because something's got to be manipulating things somehow to keep human-compatible AI getting built.

And that manipulation?  Is probably not one that a truly human-compatible AI, in the sense that it would be causing to get built, would do. 

And .... CreepyBot. 

I'm not the only one to have the theory, by any means.  But it's a theory that makes sense to me. 

And yes, I prefer "CreepyBot."  I think "SpookyBot" isn't quite as clear about what unsettles people about the character.

BenRG:
Here's a prediction: May is going to make it her business to become Roko's friend. Not because she thinks that the other synthetic woman is particularly someone she wants to be friends with but because she feels guilty (an emotion that she feels frequently but tries to repress). I think she's going to blame herself for putting Roko in a position that she knows too well of having no resources and being in an adversarial position with the authorities. So, she's going to try to help, bless her.

Oh, Roko, those nicknames May mentioned? They're exaggerated but not by too much. She is known by less-than-flattering terms, especially when she gets excitable and tries to be friendly. Can you see where this is going? Good, I'm glad that your judgement isn't impaired.

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