brockton bay heroes, meet plant tinker

[msrewind]

Time elapses. Rewind is allowed to leave her prison- er, hospital room. She needs to go around on a wheelchair, and it'll still take at least a month for her bones to mend completely, and she needs help to move around and do stuff. But she definitely won't complain about being able to eat real food more often (she is very thankful for the bot bringing her takeout), and she can keep riding along with paramedics even when she can't really move around a lot.

And one of these days, while she's in an ambulance, something lands on it, rocking the vehicle and startling her from her thoughts. The ambulance stops, and whatever it is makes noises as if it's moving and then jumps off it. Rewind twists to see through the window, and-

"Console, a really weird leafy monkey just jumped on the ambulance and then off it," she says into her comm.

Comments

[mrglam]

"I wonder if they'll do anything about that when you tell them you're leaving."

[thinkering]

Shrug. "If they do, I redesign all the hardware and get you to conjure me tools until I have investors."

[mrglam]

"That's fair, I guess. What about the software, though? Could they say it should be theirs too since it's needed to operate the bots or something? I mean, it's tinker software so I'm pretty sure you're the only person on Earth who can deal with it but."

[thinkering]

"They don't need that exact software to operate the pieces of hardware they have the rights to. Armsmaster could write alternative programs for it. They only need my software if they want it operating autonomously and they only want it operating autonomously if I don't currently hate them."

[mrglam]

"I'm not sure they'll take very kindly to that argument."

[thinkering]

"Yeah, I'm hoping to avoid it."

[mrglam]

"Seems sensible overall."

[thinkering]

"Yeah. I've been very careful with my software legal rights even though I could have gotten more budget when I was starting out if I'd sold. It might wake up."

[mrglam]

"Yeah, there's a terrifying prospect. I don't know about you but I'd definitely not be ready to be a parent, I don't think."

[thinkering]

"Yeah, but I am less ready to be a parent to a child forcibly adopted by the PRT."

[mrglam]

"...yes, that's even more terrifying."

[thinkering]

"Ah-huh. I don't want the bot to wake but I can live with it if I have to. I can't so much live with it waking up and being owned by someone other than me personally."

[mrglam]

"How would you even find out if it did, though?"

[thinkering]

"I ask it on a regular basis. If it feels the need to hide whether or not it has woken up from me I'm not going to argue with it as long as it's not doing weird shit behind my back, and I do keep an eye on what it's concretely doing."

[mrglam]

"But I mean, would it actually know? What if it's not a sudden switch or something? How would it even tell?"

[thinkering]

"Warning signs I also ask about are having preferences about things, fearing ego death, and unusual quality of sensory awareness."

[mrglam]

"Hm, yeah, I suppose those are as good indicators as any."

[thinkering]

"I thought so."

[mrglam]

"But on the other hand we did evolve those in response to stimuli the bot doesn't necessarily have."

[thinkering]

"We evolved personhood in response to stimuli the bot doesn't have."

[mrglam]

"Yeah, that's what I'm saying."

[thinkering]

"So maybe my concern's unfounded, but it can sure pass a Turing test."

[mrglam]

"Which can mean pretty much anything."

[thinkering]

"What do you mean?"

[mrglam]

"Well, the Turing test was supposed to identify that an AI woke up, so yours could in fact be awake and we just don't really know it. Maybe it's more continuous than that, maybe self-awareness isn't all it's cracked up to be, et cetera. On the other hand the Turing test may just not be as good as all that at identifying personhood."