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AI wonderings and discussion

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Is it cold in here?:
Jeph said once that AIs are the legal owners of their bodies, but people like the former nuclear missile sub must be exceptions.

Wingy:

--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 31 Dec 2020, 19:35 ---Jeph said once that AIs are the legal owners of their bodies, but people like the former nuclear missile sub must be exceptions.

--- End quote ---
When you're in the military, the military owns your little pink (or whatever color) body.  Why would it be different for an AI?

Gnabberwocky:
Again, I think it's a matter of choice for the AIs. Those who choose to upload into hardware such as nuclear subs forgo their rights to body ownership, while those who go for smaller personal hardware have full bodily rights if they own said hardware.

Wingy:
Sorry, I was less than clear. 

Suppose May, in her old chassis, volunteered for the Air Force.  She gets assigned to work on the flight line in her present form.  The military would then have the responsibility to fix her old chassis, or assign her a new one.  A new one might be more job related, or it might just be one that doesn't need to be fixed as often.  Either way, it's the Air Forces equipment until May's discharged.  Whether May would keep her current form at discharge is a different decision - Bubbles kept hers and perhaps made the decision to keep it instead of being placed in a civilian model.  If the chassis May changed into is still necessary Air Force equipment, May might have had to transfer back to a civilian body, perhaps even her old chassis from the Dept of Corrections.  That's how I think this would work in Jeph's universe; it's not strictly a matter of the AIs choice; it's the military's choice based on current needs.

I'm sure May would have wanted to join the military and picked an assignment as a battle drone, if such a pick was guaranteed.  My understanding is today in the US is you swear in before you know your assignment in almost all cases, so you seldom know what you're going to be doing.  In the rare cases for people with demonstrated specialty skills (MDs, etc.), they may have a guaranteed position waiting in a certain field, but even this is not guaranteed in every case.  This is clearly not the situation May was in, given her discussion with Momo about future jobs.  Plus, I doubt May has the mentality for military service.

Penquin47:
Generally speaking, if you're an MD, the armed forces knows you have so many more choices that they're not going to screw you over.  If you sign up for the armed forces, they're not going to waste your time or skills by putting you in a job that could be done by any 18-20 year old fresh out of high school.

Enough of the armed forces' doctors are home grown (they joined up young and were identified as medical school candidates) that they have their own medical school.  My mom is a proud graduate of it.  Others were ROTC scholarship students in college who continued those scholarships through a civilian medical school (as many were encouraging Mom to do but she was determined that she was NOT going to be a doctor, she wanted to be a research scientist and did that to pay back her ROTC scholarship before being told "go to medical school or get out" and deciding that getting out, as a research scientist with two kids under 3 in the middle of a recession, was not a good option).

The people coming out of their ROTC scholarships are usually put into work in their fields, if possible, because the armed forces doesn't see the sense in paying for you to get the training and then not using it, especially in a field like computer science where four years later your training might be out of date if you're not keeping up.

It's the kids coming straight out of high school or going in semi-voluntarily (I don't know if it's still a thing, but for a long time kids who messed up in not exactly trivial ways but not, like, murder, could be given the option of joining the military instead of serving jail time) who get the "you go where we put you and if you don't like it tough" treatment.  If a recruiter tells you otherwise - always remember, recruiters LIE.

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