blasto, meet official opinions on self-replicating minions

[peterxy]

The PRT catches wind of a strange increase in disappeared domestic animals in the downtown area. Given that the people who live there are the rich and powerful, this is clearly a problem that needs to be investigated and solved immediately. The PRT, of course, agrees that this is of utmost importance, and not just because of precedent about mass abductions of pets, of course not, why would you think that, they are so very worried about Fido, even Scion recognizes the merits of rescuing lost pets.

(Lorica's asked to maybe keep a few more eyes there than she has been.)

Comments

[mxglam]

Not very many civilians do, at first, but some, and the reaction is at least somewhat positive.

Over the next couple of days, there are no new sightings of any creatures with more plant in them than usual. And after recording a webisode where they finally show their ability to create copies, Glam floats over to Lorica's workshop. Knock knock!

[thinkering]

A bot opens the door. Lorica's having lunch. "Hey you."

[mxglam]

"Hi, love. How're you?"

[thinkering]

"I'm all right. Amused by the PR spin on my bots."

[mxglam]

"Yeah, I saw that. But hey, it frees you from looking into cloaking!"

[thinkering]

"It does, I was getting almost nowhere with that, it was so frustrating."

[mxglam]

"How does it work anyway?"

[thinkering]

"You mean besides 'badly'? You really want me to try to explain you tinkertech?"

[mxglam]

"No, I mean, how do you convince your power to give you a cloaking device? Not the details."

[thinkering]

"Oh. My power will cough up most things if I give it enough levers for software rather than a human operator to push. I got it to work at night because light conditions vary a lot more meaningfully at night - so I could have a setting for flying under a streetlight and various levels of light pollution and moon phases and stuff - and I was trying to convince it that 'daylight' was a valid setting but didn't get anywhere. And it didn't work very well because I didn't want it deciding when to be invisible, I needed to be able to guarantee that it'd just stay that way, and I didn't think they'd find 'it will probably usually judge that it is correct to be invisible' would fly."

[mxglam]

"Couldn't you do that and then not tell them?"

[thinkering]

"It's not that uncommon that the bot makes a decision that I wouldn't have known to authorize in advance. That's okay if it's just making tactical choices but it's a problem if it catches me in a lie about my design."

[mxglam]

"Are there many instances of it making decisions you wouldn't have approved of even in hindsight?"

[thinkering]

"Not lately. But there are totally things I'd want a bot to go visible for, and they don't want it to go visible under reasonable circumstances, they want it to never do that."

[mxglam]

"Wouldn't the bot agree with you that showing the Protectorate only invisibility was a good decision, even if it was in fact capable of choosing not to be invisible?"

[thinkering]

"Not if it thought it wouldn't get caught and there was some kind of emergency calling for it to be visible. It learns from me and that's the kind of thing I'd do. But if I am calling the shots and people don't like the shots I call I can say 'sorry, won't happen again, human error' and if the bot does it while I'm not at the keyboard after I told them it would not do that no such leeway. Ugh, I want out."

[mxglam]

"Ugh," they agree. "Yeah, that sucks. Why couldn't they just let the bot decide...? They use its AI on Endbringer fights!"

[thinkering]

"In Endbringer fights the PR stakes are lower and the baseline rate of gone-to-hell is higher. They can tolerate a lot more variance. People try all kinds of crazy shit in Endbringer fights and I'm nowhere near the most outrageous."

[mxglam]

"...I suppose," they agree reluctantly.

[thinkering]

"It all makes sense, it just doesn't make my sense."

[mxglam]

"...I didn't know there were multiple kinds."

[thinkering]

Snort. "Now you do."

[mxglam]

"What's the difference between them, then?"

[thinkering]

"Mine's better."

[mxglam]

"Oh, of course, now I know."