Log 0: drowning in this human nature (actionpost)

[citadelspirit]

(A small red dot appears inside the City barrier, high in the sky. As it comes soaring down, it reveals itself to be a hunk of metal, a little escape pod, glowing from atmospheric heat and deploying its maneuver jets as hard as it can manage. It staggers in the air, clangs hard off a building, thumps over a roof as it leaves a long black scrape,

Comments

[der_freischuetz]

A dramatic entrance, I have to say.

[citadelspirit]

Dramatic seems to be part of this absurd contraption's definition. The human race has forgotten how to build a working computer system.

[der_freischuetz]

You are not human, then?

[citadelspirit]

What else would you assume me to be?

[der_freischuetz]

Hard to say, hard to say. But most humans do not think of themselves as 'the human race'.

[citadelspirit]

There are no non-human sentient biological beings. If you think I am an android, a dumb non-volitional AI, you are far from the truth.

How much I hate being this human shell. Every tiny sliver of data that once made up my glorious mind would be revolted at this shameful thing that you call a body.

1/2

[der_freischuetz]

You will find the rules here to be different.

[der_freischuetz]

Android...? AI...?

[citadelspirit]

The rules are already suboptimal. But when that is the case, I merely change them.

...You have never heard of an artificial intelligence? A machine with all the intellectual and creative capacity of a human, and then some? A mind unbound from mere flesh and blood, and given eternal life and potential?

[der_freischuetz]

Don't say I haven't warned you then, when the rules in the City prove themselves as not easily changeable.

The Doctor would have a field day with you. A machine, hm? 'All the intellectual capacity of a human' I can understand, but the creative part you will have to prove.

[citadelspirit]

I won't.

Even I can't simply construct an AI out of thin air, and I know everything that has been discovered about their functioning. From what I see, I doubt you have the computer systems here to support one. I suppose if you have never seen the performance of such a mind, you would disbelieve. A common pattern among those who believe themselves superior to us.

[der_freischuetz]

You can hardly fault me for thinking of machines as machines.

[citadelspirit]

And machines, by their nature, must be uncreative and limited?

[der_freischuetz]

Machines, by their definiton, only act the way they are programmed, yes? Hardly room for much creativity.

[citadelspirit]

And if the way they are programmed is a set of code that allows them to learn and behave on their own? Not all programs are so constraining as you say.

What is a human, if not a set of crude biological programs given time to run?

[der_freischuetz]

Could you say it's a living machine, then, or a mechanical human? In the end it's all the same, I suppose.