Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 4026-4030 (17th to 21st June 2019)
Mr Intrepid:
--- Quote from: Cornelius on 24 Jun 2019, 00:50 ---
--- Quote from: Scarlet Manuka on 23 Jun 2019, 20:55 ---
--- Quote from: Cornelius on 22 Jun 2019, 00:06 ---The question then seems to be why May want simply place in a server rack, with access to the outside world, when she was released, but was put in a chassis in the first place. You'd think that would be the cheaper option.
--- End quote ---
She's not allowed to earn money by renting out processor time. It might be part of the same deal; it's easier to keep her out of systems she's not allowed to be in if she's physically running on a self-contained chassis.
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That is the answer, of course, confirmed by today's comic. Regular meetings with her parole officer also preclude a stationary chassis - such as an assembly arm. As I suspected, it's not much to do with the parolee's wishes, as with the restraints inherent in their parole.
Seeing how connected most AI, even in the more basic chassis, are, however, I'm not sure if it does keep her out of systems. Anyway, I imagine even if it is self contained, that connection is just a usb wifi-connector away.
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I would suspect that an AI on parole has the equivalent of a ankle monitor. Their parole officer could track any online/ non-corporeal activity that way.
JimC:
A point that occurs to me is that AIs seem to earn roughly the same salary as humans, need far less living space (ie rooms converted to charging cubicles) and charging probably far less expensive than food. So why aren't they all rolling in cash? And the answer has to be some sort of payment for the bodies. Maybe its something like UK student loans?
hedgie:
They might have higher or more frequent medical costs. For the most part, the human body is self-repairing, and I doubt that current AIs have that capacity. And the nicer the chassis, the more replacement parts are going to run, since they're likely proprietary. Kinda like how a friend of mine ended up having to get rid of his Tesla after a divorce and a voluntary "demotion" at work. Things rarely went wrong, but when they did, the repairs were astronomical.
OldGoat:
Jeph is a master of personal interaction between his characters, but regarding the economics of the QCverse, not so much. I'm probably not the only one here to cut my SciFi teeth on Heinlein. He made a big deal of it in his universe, but for Jeph it's just something he fills in details about from time to time.
It's a web comic, not a challenge to Atlas Shrugged or Cities in Flight. I'm not going to let obsession with AI employment, robot standards of living, and relationships both carbon and silicon cloud my enjoyment of a fun, ongoing yarn.
JimC:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 23 Jun 2019, 21:40 ---Wasn't the chassis Momo originally asked for, not the one she settled for, USD30,000? That gives us a point of reference.
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And Roko's top of the range chassis was 20K more than the previous year's model.
https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3910
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