8.0 Day in the Library (Spamlogs)

[no_fastolfe]

[Private to Sherlock]
At your convenience. I will understand if the way is impassable, however. I found myself among a wetland on my way this morning.

Library Spams]
[Vasilia is in the library, shelving books and generally getting the lay of the stacks. When she sees something out of place she goes for it-- surgical, putting it back in order as if she blames it for being out. Patterns, she's always been good at patterns.]

[OOC: Sorry about the lateness, Nemo!]

Comments

action.

[no_fastolfe]

Indeed, I subscribe to no religious superstition! It is true that we are responsible for robots as no non-sapient lifeform may be responsible for anything.

And we can be-- we must be blamed if robots cause harm. We are their stewards, and my experience with the T-X unit aboard this vessel has only solidified the abstract possibility of catastrophe. I do not blame her for what she is; in her past, generations of machines back, a human designed an intelligent machine that could kill!

[Robotic philosophy. She cares about it very deeply.]

There is a cautious path to walk between creating a safe but inert intelligence-- a non-learning thing-- and creating a brilliant and infinitely adaptable but also infinitely unstable intelligence. I believe that the Three Laws provide a guide along that path.

action.

[tobecaprican]

There's a reason that humans don't have any Three Laws, though. On one hand [ and he goes to put the book he took out away ] it means we have the capacity to be terrible, and maybe we'd rail against our creators for not taking the precautions your people did with your robotics.

But on the other hand, it's a matter of free will. The choice to not be terrible, over simply being programmed.

action.

[no_fastolfe]

Why would you design a robot-- a specific machine, although more than a mere machine, with a specific purpose-- to be able to experience pain? For the thwarting of your ambitions is pain, the rejection and denial of others is pain. The goal is not to create a new life, to mimic humanity. The goal is to create a helper.

You can hurt an Ascenion robot-- if you will pardon my clumsy analog-- 'hurt' them by leading them into conflict, in which they cannot obey their guiding Laws. You can, if you know how, order even an advanced robot with high self-preservation potential to destroy itself.

And yet if you do that you do not deserve access to robots! If they lack the range of responses of humanity than it is also humanity's responsibility to provide the structure they need. Not to change them-- but to change their operating environment. You would not set a harvesting combine in the ocean and expect it to work. No: you place it on an agricultural plot and do not ask it to choose if it would like to swim instead.

I think the question I would ask-- in much shorter terms-- is this: does a sapient being deserve, by default, 'Free Will?'

action.

[tobecaprican]

[ Silent for a moment, before giving her a smile, small and prim. ]

Well, it sounds as though your people found success in this area. And really, 'free will' of humanity has its own limits. We've laws, pressures, doubt. We're programmed in our own way.

action.

[no_fastolfe]

[Her answering smile is superior]

If you still wish to learn Ascenion programming, it will be a rather more in-depth lesson. But you know the basic foundations of it, the theory now.