What do the slave camps do? [Reign of Steel]

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by ericthered

In the reign of steel setting, some AI's make use of captive human labor to boost their economy, such as Seattle and Beijing.

What activities are these unfortunates actually doing? How does the zonemind justify the cost of the guard robots? The stereotypical activity for such slave camps is mining, but that's among the things machines do much much better than humans.

During the early days I can see some use for humans that operate human-only machinery, thus giving the AI more vehicles, but in the years after the collapse those machines may not be worth maintaining, certainly aren't worth replacing, and the zonemind may be able to make a simple robot that operates the human-only construction equipment. And with the way the world is going, it may just be about replacing chips and wiring up cameras.

Actual muscle power is probably the least effective way to use your humans.

Robots have struggled to replicate all of the things fingers can do, at least all in one package. So fine work may be something your humans are good at. But not too fine.

Work where you don't know what to expect seems like it might be a good option, like many repair jobs. That may be the riskiest place to employ your humans, but if it works, you may have a real economic advantage.

The final economic use I can think of is to staff factories that have just a few non-automated positions until you can replace the humans in that system.

lastly, you can run a sham camp that promises food, shelter, and work, and pull the troublesome wild humans out of the wild into camps where you can watch them properly and sneak contraceptives into their diet. Or kill them en-route to "new" camp.

so how would you as a zonemind make money off of captive humans?

Robots ain't free.

This is esp. true of the advanced 'smartbot' neural net robots that can actually take the place of a human for most tasks. The Zoneminds have vast resources, but their industrial infrastructure is still finite, turning out new robots, esp. high end robots, takes time and resources.

Some slaves do plain old manual labor. Yes, a robot would be better at it...but a dumbot has no intellect and requires constant supervision unless the task is entirely repetitive. Using a human slave gives you a manual laborer that has the equivalent intelligence of a high-end smartbot.

Some slaves do skill labor of various sorts, under bossbot supervision.

The thing is, if you're a Zonemind, you've got a lot of humans around anyway, so it makes economic sense to work them to death instead of just disposing of them.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Sure, a bot can do a lot of jobs better, but if the people are already there you might as well use them while they last and postpone the investment.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Robots ain't free.

.....
Some slaves do plain old manual labor. Yes, a robot would be better at it...but a dumbot has no intellect and requires constant supervision unless the task is entirely repetitive. Using a human slave gives you a manual laborer that has the equivalent intelligence of a high-end smartbot.

Some slaves do skill labor of various sorts, under bossbot supervision.

The thing is, if you're a Zonemind, you've got a lot of humans around anyway, so it makes economic sense to work them to death instead of just disposing of them.

Do you have any ideas on what they actually DO though? I'm looking for ideas on the actual tasks they are performing.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

And one thing humans are really good at, and conventional computing architectures aren't, is fuzzy pattern recognition.

Now with non-cooperative slave workers you need to get a bit more subtle. Putting them into a virtual reality that models threats based on various predatory animals, and prioritises them based on subconscious responses, might work.

But how much does it take to make them cooperative? will a simple rewards system where they get slightly better food suffice? I'm deciding if the zoneminds want crushing despair or a cold pragmatism out of their slaves.

Guarding probably isn't that complicated. A turret with a sensor and a good field of view can do most of the work.

That's still expensive though. And requires your humans to be stationary. But human labor can be VERY cheap in this setting. especially if you're feeding the remaining sliver of the population off of the suddenly booming animal population and stored food rather than farming.

[ericthered]

Setting the slaves to salvage duty might be fairly profitable. I mean, eventually you'll send a TNU-5 "Eater" to knock the whole place down and process it for useful items, but humans can get the high-value items before you have the resources to refine an entire city. Electrical wiring is especially valuable, Cars are also high value targets, and humans often get creative about finding stuff if you give the right incentives.

Of course, turning in a broken robot carcass for salvage is a good way to get terminated.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Do you have any ideas on what they actually DO though? I'm looking for ideas on the actual tasks they are performing.

They build things, buildings, fences, the pour concrete and dig ditches. They scavenge from ruined cities and facilities. Some of them probably drive trucks and other transports that don't have smartbot brains. Yes, a dumbot can drive a truck, but it'll need supervision. I imagine some of them staff metal working plants or other facilities. If the slaves are very numerous, some of them will be growing food.

But how much does it take to make them cooperative? will a simple rewards system where they get slightly better food suffice?

In some cases it would. Food, privileges, better quarters. Others could be motivated by fear of punishment, "make your quota and keep your bones intact". Some could be motivated by fear of suffering in someone else. "Make your quota or we cut off a finger of your son/daughter".

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by ericthered

But how much does it take to make them cooperative? will a simple rewards system where they get slightly better food suffice? I'm deciding if the zoneminds want crushing despair or a cold pragmatism out of their slaves.

Depends on the zonemind. Anything from "work them until they starve or freeze" to "encourage them to sell out their fellow workers for an armband and a ration increase".

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by ericthered

In the reign of steel setting, some AI's make use of captive human labor to boost their economy, such as Seattle and Beijing.

What activities are these unfortunates actually doing? How does the zonemind justify the cost of the guard robots? The stereotypical activity for such slave camps is mining, but that's among the things machines do much much better than humans.

The standard activities for the slave camp inmates is salvage of useful items and construction work in urban environments (see Zone Tel Aviv, p. 36; Zone Paris, p. 34-35). Workers aren't just doing hand labor - human workers are operating power tools, using powered exoskeletons, VR enabled gear, etc. (see p. 100 and the entries on port facilities and construction sites, and note that this sort of work was not unknown to humans even before the apocalypse; most were used to partnering with machines, as the Virtual Society indicates). A human worker can be more effective than a cheap non-volitional unless the latter is directly supervised by an AU.

The guard robots aren't that expensive. If one stalker robot can supervise 20 humans each of which does the work of a robot, that's still 19 tech robots saved. The humans are fairly easy to maintain since the AIs stocks of stowed food etc. are still larger than the survivor population (due to biowarfare)

Another point is that combat robots guarding humans aren't wasted. The zoneminds generally want to maintain a sizable reserve force of combat robots, in the event of inter-zone conflict or a surge of uman resistance forces. In such contingencies, they'd shoot the slaves, then deploy, so so the slave camps wouldn't tie up resources during "wartime". Now, of course some zoneminds keep their reserves powered down to reduce upkeep, but since they generally need the troops anyway, the cost of using combat bots as guards (and reaping the economic benefit of free labor) is comparable to the cost of having combat robots you aren't using at all.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

They build things, buildings, fences, the pour concrete and dig ditches. They scavenge from ruined cities and facilities. Some of them probably drive trucks and other transports that don't have smartbot brains. Yes, a dumbot can drive a truck, but it'll need supervision. I imagine some of them staff metal working plants or other facilities. If the slaves are very numerous, some of them will be growing food.

Yep. Because the apocalypse involved a LOT of biowarfare there are still huge amounts of human-designed equipment and industry in lots of places. Much of it was dismantled but much still remains.

The zones with the most slaves, e.g. New Delhi and Tel Aviv, are generally keeping the humans because the zonemind is ideologically committed to biological-machine symbiosis. In those zones food production may occur (see New Delhi for notes on this); in many other zones, the slave population is so low relative to the former size that they can use stocks of canned goods, MREs, etc. Often the human population died off much faster than these could be consumed or salvaged, and large stocks were left in robot-controlled areas.

[selenite]

Salvage/mining/other work is just a pretext.

The Mind depends on random number generators to keep its AI system functioning and not locking up on local optima. The humans in the camp are measured in great precision so the least significant bits of every action can be used as input to the random number feed.

This leaves the AI vulnerable to well choreographed dancing.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by selenite

Salvage/mining/other work is just a pretext.

The Mind depends on random number generators to keep its AI system functioning and not locking up on local optima. The humans in the camp are measured in great precision so the least significant bits of every action can be used as input to the random number feed.

This leaves the AI vulnerable to well choreographed dancing.

That's...just insane enough to be possibly valid.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by selenite

This leaves the AI vulnerable to well choreographed dancing.

"I don't know whether we'll bust out of here next week, Jimmy, or next year, or whether we grow old and die in this scrap heap, or whether the 'bots exterminate us tomorrow. But today we survive, lad. And I don't care how unthinkable it may be, how repulsive, how great a betrayal of everything you are and ever were - if you want to see the sun rise tomorrow, Jimmy, you will do jazz hands."