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Your Ambulance's Fragile Mind

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Thu, 2010-09-02 00:23

Zen Shooter Zen Shooter's picture

Your Ambulance's Fragile Mind

AI Lucidity is pretty low. For example, the sample Bot/Vehicle AI in the basic book has Lucidity 20, TT 4, and the rules state that AIs are subject to stress damage. Isn't this a problem for emergency and combat vehicles? Like the kind adventurers often travel in? The Stressful Experiences Table (EP 215) says that "Extreme Violence (viewing)" does 1D10/2 SV. The AI avoids this damage by succeeding on a WILx3 roll, but that target number's only 30. Wouldn't a lot of combat and emergency vehicles go crazy? Do military units have to keep therapists on hand to talk to the tanks?

Thu, 2010-09-02 06:48

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Your Ambulance's Fragile Mind

LOL! Good one. "My tachikoma's got PTSD" (in addition to the personality disorders it came with in the first place) I don't know why an AI/AGI/SeedAI should roll on the same stress table as used for transhumans. Seems to me that most of those entries are irrelevant to non-human forms of inteligence. Sure, getting guts stuck on your winshield wiper is annoying, but I dont think the average city bus is going to need therapy everytime someone walks out in front of it. Orange barrels! Now those can cause some serious SV! :D

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Thu, 2010-09-02 07:01

babayaga

Re: Your Ambulance's Fragile Mind

The AIs/AGIs likely to work in stressful environments are probably hardened (corebook p.215) against a handful of stress types.

Thu, 2010-09-02 09:50

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: Your Ambulance's Fragile Mind

Plus I would argue that to an AI, seeing someone’s guts on the floor is not a very stressful adventure. Why would it be, they have no empathy for the person. The stress we feel in such a situation is centrally caused by our empathic link to those around us. AGIs are slightly different, most of those (i.e the ones being played by players) are designed to be at least close to Transhumanity. They are programmed to feel hurt, feel threatened, feel sorry for their fellow man. It all really depends on how advanced the AI we are talking about. Strong AI (AGI's, TITANs, *SPOILER STUFF*) would probably suffer from all of the stress inducing conditions the core book provides. With weaker AI I would say its up to the GM to have fun with it. Killing a Tanks crew in front of it and torturing them might not have much of an effect, but slowly picking away at its programming as it fades away from any semblance of sentience it has attained might.

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Thu, 2010-09-02 13:26

Xahn Borealis Xahn Borealis's picture

Re: Your Ambulance's Fragile Mind

Another fun fact: Fur Coats have Lucidity 2. The mind boggles.

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Thu, 2010-09-02 17:16

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Your Ambulance's Fragile Mind

Xahn Borealis wrote:
Another fun fact: Fur Coats have Lucidity 2.

"My fur coat got a nervous breakdown from the elevator music!"

Quote:
Plus I would argue that to an AI, seeing someone’s guts on the floor is not a very stressful adventure.

But seeing the badly installed libraries, the broken dependency chains and failed checksums of a fellow AI might be traumatic...

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Thu, 2010-09-02 18:27

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Your Ambulance's Fragile Mind

A thought; AI's have a Savvy Attribute. Seems to me that Savvy operates by the ability of the intelligence to sympathize, empathize and appreciate the quality of Sentience in others. It also seems to me that Savvy is the primary attribute that makes an intelligence score high on a Turing test. So, given that AI have Savvy, it might not be such a stretch that most of the items on the stress table can affect an AI. But the mechanisms might be different. Looking for themes among the items of the stress table it seems to boil down to Fear and Grief. Fear of pain, the unknown, and death. Grief over loss of important relationships. One could argue that a non-hostile alien encounter is an ecstatic rather than fearful experience but from either perspective it's bound to make you evaluate your place in the 'verse in real terms with is always pretty stressful. Regardless, I believe that an AI is more likely to experience stress from the loss of a loved one than from an alien encounter. If you're an AI everyone else is an alien. The upshot; Self awareness requires the ability to recognize the sentience of others as independent of oneself and this engenders empathy and sympathy. So, given that an AI can experience and be motivated by fear and pain most of the entries on the list are likely to be stressful to an AI. Or I'm simply incapable of conceiving an alternate paradigm for sentience.

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Thu, 2010-09-09 16:01

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Re: Your Ambulance's Fragile Mind

Arenamontanus wrote:
But seeing the badly installed libraries, the broken dependency chains and failed checksums of a fellow AI might be traumatic...

That would be traumatic to the sysadmin called into to help the AI that crashed, too. :)

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