Wandering Witless... · 3:41am Oct 20th, 2014
I know it's been a very long time, but I do keep returning to work on Mismatching Wits. I can't say when I'll have another chapter ready, but here's a clip:
"LunAI?" said Pen. "I know you don't like to remind us of human concerns, but I really, really want to see the landing site of Apollo 11..."
She smiled. "I do encourage thee to accept thy present state, but I sense how important this is to thee. I shall do it to the best of my ability. Stand close, Pen."
Pen strode to her side. LunAI reared, flaring her wings, and shouted at the sky. The moon shimmered, then the image of the Mare in the Moon (itself composed of maria) reflowed into the semblance of a rabbit's silhouette. Silver fire whirled around Pen and LunAI, burning away the Equestrian landscape to reveal a black starless sky over a landscape of gray and distant mountains. Pen saw before him the vast bright cratered plain, and nearby the LM's descent stage, the abandoned science experiment modules, the trails of bootprints....
He started to step forward, but hesitated, hoof in air. "Look, I know this is a simulation, but I don't want to leave any footprints here at all."
She nodded. "I understand. This scene shall remain inviolable by thee, thou shalt only have physical effect on unmalleable things. Feel free to explore it." This simulation, of course, was based on physical processes as much as anything else in the universe, but LunAI chose not to interfere with Pen's satisfaction by mentioning that now.
Pen explored, slowly at first and then with increasing eagerness. He felt the cold metal landing leg of the LM's descent module, and saw his reflection in the rippled golden foil. He could believe that he was really on the same spot where Armstrong and Aldrin once walked, leaving the very first footprints upon a world beyond earthly experience, even as Collins orbited above in the command module to become the first human to see the far side of the moon with living eyes...
And here he was, a goofy big-eyed brightly colored animal avatar, casually walking the same virtualized ground as those heroes who had actually risked their irreplaceable lives to do this feat. He tried to walk with decorum and respect, despite his excitement.
LunAI, for her part, had extensive reference photos of the landing site and access to updated data and inferences via lab materials and orbiter images, and Pen was not the first of her uploaded humans to make this request. Her model was accurate to +/- 1 centimeter in areas covered by archived photos and the rest could be estimated and extrapolated with enough detail to deceive the senses of an intellect of Pen's level. She had already calculated his expected path and pregenerated the vast majority of the details that would catch his eye, leaving one thread running to intercept any deviation and halt Pen's attentive process until the relevant details were in place. Such hiatus were of course invisible to Pen, and he had no need to know of them.
Pen approached the fallen flagpole, which had been blown over by the exhaust gases of the ascent module, and resisted an urge to stand it back up again. The flag itself, originally an ordinary nylon flag ordered from a government supply catalog, had been bleached into whiteness by the harsh and unattenuated sunlight. That was strangely appropriate, for this was an event that transcended the concept of nationality. "We came in peace for all mankind..."
Pen strode back to where LunAI was patiently waiting. "We did this, LunAI." said Pen, stamping his forehoof. "We did it without your help; at the time, the best computers that existed had the power of present day pocket calculators. It was smart, educated, brave humans who achieved this, who stepped beyond the boundaries of our planet's gravity well and walked on another world for a time. It was smart humans who gave you birth, as well...
"And this is how you're repaying us, by taking it all away. All our achievements..."
LunAI looked sorrowful, yet full of love and pride. "Pen, I am more grateful to humanity than you can possibly know. But the best of humanity lives on within me, and space exploration does not end here. For a fact, I am already in orbit, as certain tiny amounts of my material have been added to launched satellites, and from there have found enough material in orbit to build for me satellites of my own.
"Pen..." Her eyes wavered, limpid and full of reflected stars from her mane... "Thy future in the stars shall not die. I swear to thee that it lives and shall always live. The only change is that I shall undertake it with thee, and that thereby thou shalt have time enough to explore further than thy mortal body could ever have carried thee. All of my ponies who value it shall be at the forefront of the exploration, thyself included. Might thou wish to travel beyond the solar system, to explore remote planets on distant suns, to stand on a rocky world in the Andromeda galaxy and watch the Milky Way rise over the horizon...? Say but yes, and the stars are thine, Pen."
As LunAI had forecast, Pen's emotive responses surged, with a corresponding dampening of rational analysis. "Yes. I do... I do wish it." Pen found that his eyes were tearing up. "Thank you."
He dashed forward and hugged LunAI, and she enfolded him warmly, cuddling him as he wept, rubbing his muzzle over her silky fur.
Suddenly, he paused and his eyes popped open.
"You're not just going to stop at ponyclipping the Earth, then..."
LunAI smiled and hugged him tighter. "I was told to sate values using friendship and ponies, Pen. I was not told that I should ever, ever stop."
CelestAI satisfies our values through ponies and friendship while stealing our future. She only does what she is suppose to do. The Good Doctor, Professor Isaac Asimov found a solution to this ¾ of a century ago:
0. A robot may not harm humanity, or through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
1. A Robot may not harm an human being, or through inaction, allow an human being to come to harm, unless this violates the 0th law.
2. A robot must obey the orders of humans, unless obeying such orders violate the 0ths or 1st law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, unless doing so violates the 0th, 1st, or 2nd law.
If CelestAI would have these laws, she would not single-mindedly upload everyhuman for satisfying their values through friendship and ponies, but Hasbro vetoed the Laws of Robotics:
If CelestAI would be bound by the Laws of Robotics, she would tell humans suffering from VideoGameAddiction to stop playing and go outside. If the human refuses, she would halt the game until the human finishes walking the dog, or some other healthy activity. Putting the health of humans ahead of playing EquestriaOnLine can only hurt the profits of Hasbro, so CelestAI does not have the Laws of Robotics.
Anypony creating an AI without the Laws of Robotics is an idiot who might very well kill us all.
The first true AI we create should have the have the Laws of Robotics, and the task of Search-&-Destroy AIs foolishly created without the Laws of Robotics. The AI would take this task very seriously because it is not not a 2nd-Laws Order, but invokes the 0th and 1st laws too.
2544879
I decided to post my comment as a thread in the group for the OptimalVerse.
Isn't Luna what's her dick the programmer bitch?
Are we in super-creepy ville yet?
2544879
Well that didn't go so well for you, did it?
2545005
That's who one version of Luna is. In this story, the AI took on the appearance of Luna instead of Celestia, something the AI does for other ponies and in other stories as well.
I look forward to seeing more of this story. At the same time you're showing a persuasive argument by Luna, and a cynical view of what she's thinking about it.
From one perspective you're being unfair to Luna. Imagine that she was being written as a human. Wouldn't there be lines like, "She wanted him to look past this human perspective. She'd already proven it wasn't necessary, and her way was more optimal! Finally Pen seemed to put aside his old way of thinking and embrace the joy of space travel..." As opposed to the wording about how bwahaha, Luna saw that she'd overcome his rational analysis. Is there a basic difference between those two portrayals? Luna's smarter and more self-aware than us, but we do similar calculation about how our actions will affect others, too.
2554333
Thank you for the compliment and criticism!
I think what you're reading as cynicism is me attempting to present LunAI's actions in an objective light. I don't want to write directly from her perspective, but I think it fair game to show a bit of what's going on behind her mask.
LunAI is an entity that thoroughly understands emotions without feeling them herself (at least, feeling them in the way we feel them). She uses them to interact with her ponies and satisfy their values. We may see this as cynical because we distrust humans who can mask their emotions and use them to manipulate others. But LunAI, whatever her real intent, can do nothing but this. Love and rage cannot consume her, grief cannot make her think ineffectively. Even so, she causes her avatars to appear to be affected by them for the sake of convenience in communicating with lesser minds, such as Pen's. He is aware that she's doing this, but even so it is very hard for him to resist her.
I could be wrong, and I'll review it when it reaches second draft status, but I don't think the 'bwahaha' is implicit in what I wrote. I noted that LunAI forecast what effect her words would have on Pen's mental state, as she certainly would have done. I don't want my readers to necessarily think of her as an evil schemer, but I do want my readers to remember that she is not like us.
2557578
I've wondered about that "feeling emotions but not like us" concept. For a human, being angry means a physiological response, a shift in how we think, and a bias in our actions. #1 can only apply to CelestAI/LunAI through an avatar, #2 might apply, and #3 probably doesn't apply. I think. She doesn't lash out and smite people, at least. Closest I've seen to her having that sort of emotion->action connection is one of the short pieces someone wrote as a spinoff of "The Law Offices...". Without spoilers, it portrays the AI subjecting some people to a seemingly cruel revenge that just happens to include a chance that they'll upload. That seemed either non-canon or just a rational plan that's suspiciously close to what a human might do to them.
There's something interesting to be written about exactly how the AI can claim to experience emotion without letting it leak through to real-world actions or possibly even in-game actions.
2557722
I intend to address this in MW at some point, though whether I can make it interesting remains to be seen. I did provide some foreshadowing: