Clone Army Or Droid Army?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Now, if you assume that at TL11 the vehicle is going to have a few utility bots and recon drones that can take care of all the things a couple dismounted crew members could, that problem goes away. But those bots are an added cost.

Okay, add $10,000 and 50 lb for a Techbot, and as a side benefit, if your dismounted techbot gets shot, well, it was disposable, unlike dismounted crew. And $10k for the techbot is cheaper than a vacc suit with comparable capabilities.

[AlexanderHowl]

Droids do not make good stories though (it is hard for most people to care about what nonliving things experience). At best, they are cheap cannon fodder and, unlike biological soldiers, they are easily infiltrated. The other side can grab a droid, crack its codes with a quantum computer in real time, and get everything they need to send hundreds or thousands of their own droids into the base of their enemies without alerting security. After that happens a couple of times, I think that a military force would go biological.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The other side can grab a droid, crack its codes with a quantum computer in real time, and get everything they need to send hundreds or thousands of their own droids into the base of their enemies without alerting security. After that happens a couple of times, I think that a military force would go biological.

Breaking secure TL 11 encryption in real time requires a complexity 12 quantum computer (10, +4 for +2 TLs, +3 for real-time, -5 for quantum), the cheapest option for which is a megacomputer at $100M. Which will let you snoop on one communications line, since each communicator uses its own key (it doesn't actually say how you hack the brain of a captured droid, it's probably actually easier than encryption).

Which will not actually give you anything all that useful, because the droid can't reveal anything it doesn't know. And it's not like you can't also use TL 11 tech to interrogate biologicals.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Droids do not make good stories though (it is hard for most people to care about what nonliving things experience).

Only a problem if you feel the need to cater to that audience.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

At best, they are cheap cannon fodder and, unlike biological soldiers, they are easily infiltrated. The other side can grab a droid, crack its codes with a quantum computer in real time, and get everything they need to send hundreds or thousands of their own droids into the base of their enemies without alerting security. After that happens a couple of times, I think that a military force would go biological.

This is nonsense. Even supposing that you can swipe a droid and extract its full IFF package, that's one IFF package. If a hundred droids show up at the same base using the same identification, that's going to light up any security system that isn't really impressively badly engineered.

One infiltrator, that you might get. But it's not like humans are immune to an infiltrator with stolen credentials.

[Boomerang]

You only need one infiltrator droid. Its job is to place fake IFF devices on the real droids.

[AlexanderHowl]

Anyway, this assumes that SAI is software rather than hardware. If SAI are a product of hardware rather than software, than a SAI could take just as long as a biological entity to get functional through methods such as deep learning. From our current work on digital intelligence, even a LAI might require time and training to learn how to learn.

If SAI and LAI take time to learn how to learn, then the production advantage of droids goes out the window. Programs augment rather than replace their capabilities and, at best, give them a bonus to default. Of course, that means that Chip Slots probably would not exist, as people could not pop in a program to mimic a skill (which was an absurd idea for physical skills like Karate anyway).

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

You only need one infiltrator droid. Its job is to place fake IFF devices on the real droids.

So it's going to replace their communicators without them noticing? IFF is software for a communicator, it's not a separate system.

[Boomerang]

Not replace. Attach an additional fake IFF unit to a number of droids that broadcasts intermittently at random.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

You only need one infiltrator droid. Its job is to place fake IFF devices on the real droids.

I sense an Independence Day-grade underestimation of the difficulty of both doing what is meant to be done and doing it in a way that would make its outcome worth the effort.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

Not replace. Attach an additional fake IFF unit to a number of droids that broadcasts intermittently at random.

First, you're probably going to be discovered trying to do this, at least eventually. Secondly, what does this do that's useful, other than being a location transmitter? Third, how is this distinctive to droids? You can do the same thing to a biosapient's helmet or whatever.