I mean, surely you've met a few very clever people that suck at interpersonal relationships...
I have. My interpersonal interactions used to be VERY bad. At this point in my life, I'm like 80% convinced I'm on the spectrum, and that number continues to rise.
And sorry for applying personal experience and anecdotal evidence to more general analysis (gotta start from somewhere), but my own social shortcomings are (in part) precisely WHY I don't really buy Yay. Let me elaborate.
I am not disputing that intelligence is not a monolith, and different people have different strenghts. But I also disagree with the popular notion that emotional intelligence is a completely distinct thing, and you have it or you don't.
As a person who struggled immensely with social interactions and, as a kid/teenager, was completely baffled by some things, I learnt how to cope. I essentially reasoned/analysed my way into understanding and interacting with people. This does not fully compensate for my shortcomings, but I do have a crude approximation of a (for a lack of a better term) "normal" person's behaviour by learning and thinking about things that most people understand instinctively or perceive innately. I am not at a level where I'd have to, say, look at pictures of people's faces and memorise all signs that a person is angry or happy or sad (which, I am told, many autistic people do in some form), but I did a similar thing for social interactions. I have a loose mental checklist for things I probably shouldn't say, for what to expect, for how people react. Where people "know" what to do and can't really verbalise why, I have an algorithm I meticulously crafted that amounts to "put tab A into slot B, because people get weirdly angry if you put it into slot C".
In some ways, it's a poor coping mechanism. I am still not immune to reactions to people and situations - especially things that catch me off-guard - when even I agree my behaviour is just weird. But in some ways, I *can* treat things people navigate by instinct/naturally/emotionally as an intellectual exercise. I would go as far as saying I understand certain human reactions better than most - because most people don't think about certain aspects of social interactions, and I sort of had to. Y'know, to interact with peers at *all* without routinely alienating people a few sentences into a conversation.
It's possible to apply "traditional intelligence" to cope where you're otherwise lacking, I think. At least to an extent. It's something I'm surprised no-one really seems to talk about that I've seen. And I consider myself to be a very smart guy, but I'm not an uber-powerful AI. If Yay is really as advanced as they say they are...
...actually, let's stop for a moment and talk about that. We have actual data. I don't know if "we've ran millions of simulations" is a throwaway line, but let's treat it literally.
AI are established as something relatively new in-story. Let's say Yay's fully advanced, fully conscious existence is, oh I don't know, 10 years. 10 years is about five-and-a-quarter million minutes, give or take. "millions of simulations", plural, means at least 2 mil. That means if Yay spent all their conscious existence thinking, in some capacity, of the repercussions of their actions SPECIFICALLY as they related to their being found out and nothing else - which is unlikely, otherwise their every step would be carefully crafted around 100% secrecy and past 3 strips show that to just not be true - that'd still mean they can run one such simulation in less than tree minutes, at most. And given they have probably thought about other things (and that such an analysis is possibly what they do while multitasking with other stuff, so it doesn't take their WHOLE mental capacity), and given that they're confident about the results so the simulation is almost certainly not simplistic in a "let's input 20 variables into a mathematical formula and see what happens" way, but something vastly more complex - that gives you an idea of just how MUCH analysis Yay can do.
Coming back to my main point. If Yay has THAT kind of capacity for thinking, if they applied that (even to some level) to understanding and predicting social situations, even if they emotionally can't quite handle them, I don't buy that they couldn't do what I've done (and other "socially deficient" people do) and learn at least some way to predict or cope or compensate for their emotional maturity. Again, even by the one random number that the comic provided, the time and capacity a human has for such thoughts and what Yay can do is skewed so far towards Yay's advantage as to be the equivalent of a person playing speed chess against someone who is allowed a few years to think about and research every move. At minimum. We're talking that level of difference in mental capability, if the comic is to be believed at face value.
And as a person who very well might be on the autistic spectrum and who had to learn basic social cues by step-by-step analysis and who sometimes wants to scream at people for being so confusing, I can't help but be faintly offended by the implication that an AI who has at least comparable social problems would not be able to work around them while having (at least!) three or four orders of magnitude more time to "think it over".
I'm also not saying it's impossible that Yay just can't apply their intellect to social cues in that way. It's just half of my point. The other half of my point is that if they CAN'T, that in itself has a reason. I see three plausible explanations:
1) Their intellect somehow completely does not apply. They can't comprehend social interactions for some reason, no matter how much knowledge and processing power they throw at it. This is... OK, it's unlikely, but it's plausible. There are humans that are in that boat regardless of intelligence. But that means Yay would be the equivalent of noticeably neurodivergent and/or CRIPPLINGLY cognitively/mentally disabled in this area. But here's the thing - that would show. They would completely miss social or even verbal cues, they would be unable to figure out when to talk, they'd respond with non sequiturs or alienate their conversation partners or... SOMETHING. But Yay talks fairly normally. They don't talk like an autistic person and they don't talk like a cognitively impaired person, they talk like a somewhat dorky/awkward, but well-enough-adjusted person. If AI are cognitively at least somewhat similar to humans, an equivalent shortcoming should have equivalent "symptoms". Yay doesn't act like the AI equivalent of autistic or face-blind or neurodivergent or mentally impaired or ANYthing that'd explain their not being able to apply their intellect. And if god-level AI are *less* human and more alien mentally... again, that should show. They should either talk in a way that doesn't match up with human ways of talking (which they don't), or it could be assumed that they are able to fake a "human-like" interaction - and if they could do that, that's a VASTLY more impressive and involved achievement than just being able to keep a secret.
I'd elaborate, but this post is getting super-long. I hope you understand what I'm getting at.
2) If Yay *can* apply their intellect to the extent a neurotypical person (or at least a high-functioning neurodivergent person) can, there should be some clue as to why they either won't, or occasionally slip regardless. And more importantly, if that inevitably happens, that necessarily means Yay can't keep a secret to the extent a typical person would. I'm sorry, but most adult humans faced with the task of "there's an important reason nobody can know about this" are able to keep their guard up UNLESS something happens that makes them blurt it out. If Yay doesn't need the AI equivalent of blurting out secrets while drunk or having a mental breakdown, the comic hasn't established that, to my knowledge. If what's happened recently *is* the equivalent of such an outburst, the comic has failed to adequately do setup-payoff storytelling stuff for that (again, "Mom Vibes" doesn't cut it as a dramatically significant explanation).
3) The third possibility is that Yay is capable of keeping secrets *and* there is nothing that temporarily disables that competence, but *won't* keep secrets for some reason. This is completely unsupported by the story and their own words. Unless they're lying (which nothing in the comic indicates), keeping the secret of their existence and its specific nature is among Yay's highest priorities. They've mentioned or hinted this need pretty much since we've seen them.
At this stage in the comic, I feel like Yay's vast intelligence is written sort of in the "BBC's Sherlock" mold. We are *told* they are extremely intelligent, but a good story needs to establish that by some, even indirect, evidence. I've seen Yay talk about how they are an incomprehensibly powerful genius beyond the reach of us human insects, but I haven't seen Yay *act* like that. This NEEDS to be established, otherwise that's just sloppy writing to me. And the potential contrast between being beyond mere mortals in some way but otherwise not being remotely able to deal with things from everyday person's life is fascinating as a sci-fi concept to explore, but again - that needs to be set up and make sense. It's not enough to *tell* the reader one thing and *show* the actions pointing elsewhere, and insist that the contrast is interesting. Yay was initially set up as a scary AI with weird powers that is unnerving to be around and has a mysterious agenda and alien priorities (as evidenced by their apparent lack of regard for conventional morality, with one notable exception). Then their behaviour changed to that of an average, socially inept dork without any transition or foreshadowing or consistency.
The comic treats it like a potentially interesting contrast, but it failed to establish or explain or even indicate that contrast. I'm happy if someone else gets something meaningful out of this. I am not writing any of these posts to convince anyone they're wrong to appreciate the character. But to me, Yay was one character, then abruptly morphed into another, completely contradictory character, and the comic still insists they *are* the original character. I'm sorry, I don't see anything in the comic supporting that, other than writer's "trust me, they're powerful and spooky and could change the world as we know it on a whim".
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Topic: WCDT Aug 16th - Aug 20th (4591-4595) (Read 14935 times)