On p272 of the core rulebook, it states that AGIs have a -10 to all integration and alienation tests to resleeve into a "physical body."
Is there a stated reason for this deficiency? I can think of a few reasons, but wanted to see what everyone else thinks.
Also, to clarify: "physical body" means all non-infomorph morphs (pods, biomorphs, synthmorphs, bots, habitats, etc.), right? Am I also correct in assuming that this is cumulative with the -10 for sleeving in a synthmorph?
What if an AGI was made for, and spent his life, controling vehicle cyberbrains, even more than as an infomorph? Would having a physical, synthetic morph be more comfortable and easier than being an infomorph or biomorph?
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AGI resleeving
Tue, 2012-04-03 02:00
#1
nerdnumber1
AGI resleeving
Tue, 2012-04-03 10:01
#2
Prophet710
Re: AGI resleeving
AGIs by default are created digitally. Adding a whole mess of foreign parameters is going to make it a bit difficult to adapt, regardless of the relative intellectual strength of the AGI.
Concerning your other questions, adjustments can always be made by the GM in due course of reason. Such as an AGI having a bonus in controlling synthmorphs or robots or having experience with cyberbrains.
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Tue, 2012-04-03 15:08
#3
CodeBreaker
Re: AGI resleeving
I think it is intended to present AGI as primarily virtual beings, their primary point of comfort being in the virtual where they thrive so well. It is the same reason that Uplifts suffer from a similar penalty when sleeving into a nonuplift (same type) morph.
Yes, and yes. An AGI sleeving into a swarmanoid morph would suffer from a (-10 + -10 + -30) -50 modifier.
In that case, as a GM I would simply have you use a different AGI background to reflect their similar but different nature to other AGI. With the level 2 version of the Adaptability trait, and maybe the Right at Home trait for a particular morph, you can easily have an AGI that swings about from synthmorph to synthmorph with no modifiers.
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Tue, 2012-04-03 17:02
#4
Quincey Forder
Re: AGI resleeving
optional rule:
when an AGI controlling a ship is forked into a physical body, an amount of SV equal to halph the Trauma Treshold will result in her forgetting to maintain lifesupport in the ship
*cue in horrified look*
"That was a joke, Commander."
Never the less, it could be handy to mess up with the players' head, and provide a freaky red herring. Especially if dealing with the AGI managing the hab they're in.
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Wed, 2012-04-04 02:44
#5
Arenamontanus
Re: AGI resleeving
I can imagine different kinds of AGIs to have different problems with bodies. A big pre-Fall corporate AGI in one of my games was simply unable to handle embodiment: it had a too different architecture to function as a creature with a body. Similarly other AGIs might have been deliberately reared to be embodied in different forms, making the body structure *part* of their normal thinking (this is not too different from how humans work).
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Wed, 2012-04-04 13:10
#6
Axel the Chimeric
Re: AGI resleeving
This actually brings up a curious thought: How would AGIs experience stress? After all, they're modeled on human thought processes but they're fundamentally not human. Their responses would be very different.
An example brought up elsewhere, and it's really one of those examples you hate to bring up but do because it's a perfect one, is rape. For a human, this brings a profound sense of violation, disgust, and often feelings of self-loathing and lack of a control.
For an AGI, though, it's just an assault, not really any different from any other except for intent and action. They wouldn't feel any more violated by it than if someone tried to rob them and, while some of their responses might seem superficially similar, they'd have a fundamentally dissimilar reaction to a human being.
So how does an AGI experience stress? Are they built to suffer mental collapses, or are their emotional responses simply window dressing over what is really a very efficient system designed to logically assess a situation?
For a human being, if we experience too much fear, we develop a sort of response where we become panicky, withdrawn, and jump at everything, long after the danger has passed. If an AGI experienced such a situation, though, would it undergo a similar change? Or, once it is in a safer scenario, would it simply have come to the conclusion that such dangers are unlikely in the new environment and function normally?
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Wed, 2012-04-04 16:01
#7
nerdnumber1
Re: AGI resleeving
While AGIs are fundamentally different inteligences from "normal" transhumans, it seems to be implied that the ones who made them tried very hard to make them as close to human as possible, emulating both strengths and weaknesses (which makes sense as the whole reason to make AGIs the way they did was fear of unfeeling, inhuman monsters like the TITANs; making the possible monster able to feel real fear makes them a lot less scary). The success on humanizing AGIs likely varies from individual to individual. I woulld make them just as hindered by stress (for game balance purposes), but maybe make their derangements, disorders, and rp changes somewhat different.
For example: One AGI might try to retreat from the damaging emotions of humanity when things get REALLY bad, acting like an emotionless, weaker AI to protect itself basically saying "I don't want to be human anymore!" Some may have more transhuman disorders with an AGI twist: think of a computer with an obsessive-compulsive need to count things... potentially billions of things. Then others will present just like humans.
Essentially, while AGIs are computer programs, they were made using a similar format and based on the principles used to emulate human egos in electronic storage. They are closer to an electronic representation of a human mind than any present-day computer.
Thu, 2012-04-05 15:03
#8
Decivre
Re: AGI resleeving
You're making a big assumption on how an AGI perceives themselves and their reality. An AGI has a sense of self and ego, just as we do. Sexual assaults, and many similar forms of dominance tend to tear down self-esteem and a person's psychological sense of control. You cannot state with any real certainty that an AGI would not have a similar sense of self-esteem and control. If they did, then similar actions against them may affect them accordingly.
I've never gotten the impression from the books that an AGI is a purely logical being. The only real defining trait that separates an AGI from a natural ego is that they are created via code. This does not mean that they must operate in a logical manner, but rather that their mental functions are a by-product of computer logic. Of course, since human brains can be emulated by computers, this would also mean that we can be produced with computer logic. So emotion is probably not contradictory to this.
I have no doubt that AGI can react similarly. Granted, some may not; many may not. It all depends on how closely a programmer models their AGI on the human mind.
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Fri, 2012-04-06 04:11
#9
Arenamontanus
Re: AGI resleeving
I also suspect AGIs are not logic-based "classical AI" (GOFAI) but something much closer to neural networks and other modern forms of soft computing. They are shaped by learning, and might well contain modules inspired by or copied outright from biological brains. In my game AGI was a result of the earlier stages of uploading research.
Mental stress has an emotional component (something very bad happens to you), a cognitive component (your world model turns out to be very wrong) and a neural component (something messes up the structure of your mind directly). As something experiences stress, it will try to cope. However, in the case of gaining SV or traumas the coping mechanism fails: either it copes in the wrong way or it is changed by the extreme situation. This seems to be entirely general and independent of what kind of mind it is. Different minds are going to be differentially susceptible to the kinds of stress: some are more emotionally vulnerable than others, some have fast learning rate (making cognitive surprises less of a problem but also adapting too much to bad conditions), some have quick coping shortcuts (let's blank short term memory, or remove all emotional quality from it) or very different expectations of what is stressful or not (if you are not strongly attached to your body you will not react much to how it is handled, but a more logic oriented AGI might find discovering internal inconsistencies in its worldview - perhaps themselves maladaptive coping to past traumas - very upsetting). In short, I would argue that AGI can get stress as much as anything else, but that they could be all over the place in terms of toughness and sensitivity.
Maybe one could introduce the trait "Mental Toughness" that boosts LUC in the same way as Tough does DUR? And similarly mental frailty.
And as a GM, I would be happy to have an AGI player move their areas of stressfulness around a bit - maybe they don't see biological death and gore as too upsetting, but get very nervous about alien or TITAN tech: "That database ontology is just *wrong*! You can't do it like that! I need a brain bleach app stat!"
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Fri, 2012-04-06 07:33
#10
Smokeskin
Re: AGI resleeving
I don't see any reason why AGIs shouldn't suffer stress either. I'd also add that my layman's understanding of stress is that response systems that are very good at guiding our behavior in normal life can have detrimental effects under extreme circumstances. Sure not being bothered by pain would be beneficial under torture, but you'd most likely cripple yourself from carelessness in normal life - we need to be bothered by pain to function. Who says that AGIs, not really anymore advanced than humans in EP, can have their inner workings tuned any better than us?
Sat, 2012-04-07 09:13
#11
Xagroth
Re: AGI resleeving
Stress Damage is a way to keep track of abnormal influences in the ego, since they can cause crazyness (and other psychological illness). However, what makes somebody sane? Essentially, a consensus coming from society.
Thus, we can see all that stuff as memetic attacks of sorts, that separate their target from what (trans)humanity sees as acceptable, meaning it is not really a damage, but a deviation of the ego in directions the society deems unacceptable. Meaning any ego trying to be (trans)human needs to stay as "sane" as possible. And that a crazy TITANspawn may try to make peaceful contact with humanity XD.
Anyway, AGIs are not inmunne to stress, neither are uplifts or any kind of ego in EP, specially a player character's ego! XD
Sat, 2012-04-07 09:57
#12
Smokeskin
Re: AGI resleeving
Xagroth, that's just silly. Sanity isn't a social construct. It isn't just someone being different. It is actual disease, causing very real suffering.
Of course some societies have dressed prejudice up as insanity, but that doesn't invalidate psychiatry. And we can discuss how far you stray from normality before a diagnosis and treatment is warranted, much in the same way as for physical health you can discuss if obesity is a disease. But once we get to cancer and heart problems and infections, the issue is every bit as clear as it is with mental disease.
Sun, 2012-04-08 06:20
#13
Arenamontanus
Re: AGI resleeving
A useful clinical definition of sanity is that somebody can manage to live a life they find worthwhile within their culture/society. Just having weird quirks or beliefs is not really insanity if they doesn't impair the person (although they could well be caused by something diagnosable). A typical example is personality disorders: having a personality that is so extreme that you cannot function is a mental disorder, but just being a bit narcissistic or paranoid is normal. Switch environment and the same mental condition might be more or less impairing.
However, this is a definition that works for determining whether one should try to treat someone, not whether they "are" insane. There are plenty of high-functioning people out there that have things that could be called disorders in the clinic (regular drug use, sociopathy, bizarre delusions, extreme personalities, schizophrenia, ...) yet do well because they are smart or well-adjusted enough to handle them. The problem with them is that they are usually more fragile than others: if their coping mechanisms break down a bit they move quickly from function to non-function. Healthy people (high WIL?) have more of a mental buffer.
Same thing with societies. Parts of academia are great havens of Aspergers or OCD - and their positive quirks work well within this context. In a society where regular visions and messages from the gods and angels are seen as normal, conditions we would tend to think of as delusions and hallucinations are not a problem... until they break the social script (sure, hearing voices from angels is normal, but not from trees!) Worse, while the culture can help people with certain conditions (schizophrenics in this example might do well as shamans) it also means that they can be hidden until they erupt in a non-adaptive way (schizophrenia does nasty things to your mood and social abilities even there). Or conditions can be amplified as mass hysteria or shared psychosis - a society can make people mad quite efficiently.
The same goes for AGI of course. Some AGIs function very strangely, but what matters is what they experience and how well they function in their society. And mercurial societies might diverge in very odd and possibly pathological ways...
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