September 23, 2014
Freefall has gotten complicated lately. Spoilers below.
So now we've met Dr. Bowman, and he's a surprise. (A big surprise.)
There was originally a project to genetically engineer chimps to make them into soldiers. Bowman is the last surviving of those; the others all died long ago. The chimps created by it were intentionally vicious and aggressive, because it was assumed that was desireable in cannon fodder.
Bowman's brain add-on isn't capable of controlling it, and he's subject to fits of violent rage. That's why he's confined. But he was key to the design project that created the intelligence bolt-on first implemented in the Bowman's Wolves, like Florence, which works far better. Which brings us to tomorrow's strip (as I write this).
"Then I'm coming back and changing her security settings so every imbecile with a remote doesn't have a direct pipeline into her brain!"
THAT'S interesting... he's going to do this with external access, too, maybe by playing strange tones like the one the remote plays, or with odd smells (like the factory override). If he can change her security settings and make her immune to the remote, I wonder what else he can change?
Can he restrict the list of people authorized to give Florence direct orders? Or eliminate it entirely? Will he?
I wonder how many backdoors he engineered into the design?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Entertainment at
08:20 PM
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at September 23, 2014 11:22 PM (ZeBdf)
And I hope that Bowman's security settings include permanently disabling some of them, possibly disabling the interfaces themselves. Of course that means loss of access for medical reasons, or research, but hey, most of us have to get by with that.
Posted by: refugee at September 24, 2014 05:31 AM (ayoGu)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 24, 2014 07:43 AM (+rSRq)
It's possible that was explicit and I missed it, but I'm not going to go back through the archives and look for it.
Clearly in-universe people didn't think the entire thing through. While an argument can be made that the wolves aren't yet, the "any imbecile with a remote" is a powerful counterargument for leaving them there...or at least leaving them so open.
Posted by: RickC at September 24, 2014 09:36 AM (ECH2/)
The shut-down ability wasn't considered diagnostic, it was considered a safeguard.
It's a fully autonomous, mobile, self-replicating, artificial intelligence. You don't build something like that without an off switch.
Florence herself managed to temporarily immunize herself against that sound by putting water in her ears, so it's not foolproof.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 24, 2014 10:00 AM (+rSRq)
By the way, when Dr. Bowman claimed that Florence was broken, I wrote an email to the author:
Subject: Florence isn't broken!The Mayor's Assistant ordered Florence to do whatever she thought she needed to in order to save the robots. And he outranks Mr. Kornada.
He doesn't outrank the Mayor, obviously, but the Mayor never gave Florence any order which Florence is now disobeying.
So she isn't broken in any way.
And he responded:
Well, at least she's housebroken.Mark Stanley
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 24, 2014 10:29 AM (+rSRq)
I was speaking loosely. Nonetheless, I still agree you don't leave that shutdown lying around where anyone can use it.
Posted by: RickC at September 24, 2014 12:11 PM (ECH2/)
Posted by: RickC at September 24, 2014 12:12 PM (ECH2/)
"She's behaving exactly as she was programmed to behave! That's not how I wanted her to behave!"
Posted by: Mikeski at September 24, 2014 03:31 PM (luDkn)
Just about everyone else treats her and the robots like they're toys. In her case, and probably the robots', that's clearly not right.
Posted by: RickC at September 24, 2014 04:50 PM (0a7VZ)
Man! I love it when you get intellectual philosophy and humor blended like this. It's like Stephenson when he's really on his game.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at September 24, 2014 07:14 PM (zJsIy)
In Dr. Bowman's case, it would be easiest to throttle the robot creation factories output rate down. To one robot a year, maybe.
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at September 25, 2014 05:37 AM (vEp0w)
Posted by: RickC at September 25, 2014 01:23 PM (ECH2/)
Enclose all spoilers in spoiler tags:
[spoiler]your spoiler here[/spoiler]
Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted on sight.
Also, I hate unsolicited suggestions and advice. (Even when you think you're being funny.)
At Chizumatic, we take pride in being incomplete, incorrect, inconsistent, and unfair. We do all of them deliberately.
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