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

[thinkering]

And now there are zero flame-resistant monkeys. Well, one that isn't going anywhere because it's foamed.

The force un-concentrates and burns the other monkeys.

[mxglam]

And fire continues being an effective weapon against the other ones, until they're all dead or foamed. None seem to have even attempted to escape.

[thinkering]

And now it's cleanup time. Well, that's not the capes' job, although the bots don't mind helping the PRT.

[mxglam]

And Glam can spare a few bot-controlled copies with appropriately conjured cleaning tools to help, too.

[acanofworms]

News spreads. Self-duplicating creatures in Brockton Bay. An explanation to the mystery of the missing pets. Did the Protectorate know? Who's responsible for this? Was this engineered, or the result of an out-of-control cape? What are the heroes going to do about it?

In a word: panic.

High-profile heroes give statements about measures being taken and about how the Protectorate's on top of it already. They know the culprit: a tinker named Blasto, specialized in plant hybrids, current whereabouts unknown. The Protectorate reassures the population that, should it be found that Blasto's actively creating out-of-control, self-replicating minions, they will do everything in their power to stop him, including placing him on the list of most wanted parahumans, a spot he'd share with people such as the Slaughterhouse Nine.

It is implied but not said that the kill order would be part of the deal.

In order to demonstrate how seriously the Protectorate takes this matter, robots controlled by an artificial intelligence that has been used on battles against Endbringers will be roaming the city twenty-four/seven, concentrating on the downtown areas where the latest sightings have occurred, but being spread around every district.

[thinkering]

Lorica gratefully turns her attention to matters other than the cloaking device. Robots fly loose, looking around. If civilians address them they will even pause to make polite small talk and then move on.

[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.