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Old 09-28-2020, 04:42 PM   #21
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Justifying bioroids

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Originally Posted by the-red-scare View Post
I don't need a justification for the creation and use of bioroids themselves, or a rationale of why bioroids specifically are useful rather than humans, robots, or AIs.
How much of the rest of the setting can be adjusted to fit?

Bioroids are easy to justify if there is some sharp limit on digital AI (if you want something smarter than an ant, you need a biobrain, which might as well be in a shell that can survive on its own...). Or if nobody invented computers at all. Just because they are ubiquitous in futures imagined since the 1950s doesn't means they are inevitable components of a future tech path - they came enough out of left field nobody really predicted them (at least as anything different than "brains") even though we with the benefit of hindsight can see the precursors lying around well before that. For all we know it's perfectly possible most civilizations never invent them. Maybe everyone discovers some precursor to bioroids we haven't invented yet ourselves early in their industrial period which so outclasses those early precursors even they never appear. Mechanical brains? Ridiculous! Surely everybody has done the high school experiment where you reproduce Dr. Frankenstein famous reanimation of racoon corpses with a slice of human brain language center, that provided the first "thinking" engines and proto-robots...
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Old 09-28-2020, 04:55 PM   #22
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Default Re: Justifying bioroids

For bioroids to be feasible on a large scale, you basically need some jobs that aren’t appropriate for robots (possibly due to AI limitations) but that you have a shortage of willing and capable humans for (or that have been made illegal or similar, with bioroids able to do them thanks to a “not-actually-human” loophole). The bioroids don’t have to be slaves, or even second-class citizens, although having them function as such for the first several years of their lives isn’t unlikely (the indentured servitude suggested earlier), and once freed (or having their citizen status upgraded), many may opt to simply continue doing the same job (probably at a higher wage and/or an “elevated” capacity, such as a supervisor).
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Old 09-28-2020, 05:05 PM   #23
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Justifying bioroids

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Of course, we do not know if there are cognitive and psychological benefits to developing within a human woman/bioroid woman.
We're presuming a working bioroid model; obviously, if they don't work, they aren't viable.
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You may have a situation where bioroids have to develop within human women/bioroid woman for the first six months to avoid suffering from massive cognitive and psychological difficulties.
There is essentially zero chance that the difference between a human womb and an exowomb that provides the same nutrients/etc can matter before the third trimester -- the sensory system isn't linked up yet. For the third trimester the odds aren't much better (though a noise generator might become useful), because learning mostly requires interaction, and it's not actually possible to interact with the environment before birth.
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Let us example that scenario for a moment. The consequences of using an exowomb are the following:
...

The most immediate impact is that the very wealthy and very privileged people who can initially pay for the use of exowombs will be baying for blood when they realize that someone is very wrong with their children.
The immediate impact is that the procedure doesn't get approved. Something that severe would probably be detected within a year of the first test case, which is way less time than it would take to actually approve a medical procedure of that magnitude.
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Old 09-28-2020, 05:16 PM   #24
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Justifying bioroids

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Now, imagine creating bioroids that are capable of sexual reproduction with normal humans (and genetic upgrades), though not with other bioroids (or parahumans). Fifty percent of the children are normal humans (or genetic upgrades) while fifty percent are bioroids. At that point, they are just another exotic expression of humanity, a little more distant than most genetic upgrades but a lot closer than any parahumans.
That would erase "bioroid" as a meaningful category. While in Japan certain works do use "bioroid" as a synonym for genetic upgrade, in GURPS the consistent usage has been "biological organisms that were fabricated rather than grown from scratch". Which is admittedly probably more trouble than its worth.

Last edited by David Johnston2; 09-28-2020 at 06:03 PM.
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Old 09-28-2020, 05:46 PM   #25
the-red-scare
 
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Default Re: Justifying bioroids

Lots of good ideas in this thread. What I’m thinking now is something like this:

Population growth follows the lower predictions as countries transition demographically but climate change follows the worst projections. The global economy of course needs to go on producing the things it always does but there is also a massive need for climate mitigation. Whole cities are being moved inland, ecosystems are being rebuilt using technologies spun off from the new Martian terraforming project. AI is a dead end for insert-reason-here and robotics are valuable tools but often still require teleoperation. There’s enough work to keep everyone employed for centuries, but we don’t have centuries and we don’t have enough people. Whether this is literally true is irrelevant, it’s enough that people feel that way.

Bioroids are mass produced by an international project, adapted for the various biomes and trained in the mitigation efforts needed. They aren’t slaves; even from the beginning it’s clear they are people and have rights. But they’re generally seen as the saviors of the planet which makes them proud and they have good-paying steady jobs from “birth,” so for the most part they do what they were built to do.

Bioroid jobs are really hard, but if a bioroid sticks with it they can “retire” at 20, with a full pension that is held until they reach some age at which bioroids start being considered elderly. In the meantime they are free to be part of the workforce like any other, and in many fields their adaptations are quite an asset…
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Old 09-28-2020, 10:54 PM   #26
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Default Re: Justifying bioroids

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How much of the rest of the setting can be adjusted to fit?

Bioroids are easy to justify if there is some sharp limit on digital AI (if you want something smarter than an ant, you need a biobrain, which might as well be in a shell that can survive on its own...). Or if nobody invented computers at all. Just because they are ubiquitous in futures imagined since the 1950s doesn't means they are inevitable components of a future tech path - they came enough out of left field nobody really predicted them (at least as anything different than "brains") even though we with the benefit of hindsight can see the precursors lying around well before that. For all we know it's perfectly possible most civilizations never invent them. Maybe everyone discovers some precursor to bioroids we haven't invented yet ourselves early in their industrial period which so outclasses those early precursors even they never appear. Mechanical brains? Ridiculous! Surely everybody has done the high school experiment where you reproduce Dr. Frankenstein famous reanimation of racoon corpses with a slice of human brain language center, that provided the first "thinking" engines and proto-robots...
If nobody ever made a digital computer in WWII, but stuck with electro-mechanical analogue computers, you could have reasonably sophisticated computers that did the one thing they were designed for really well, but were otherwise just a lump of useless metal (try using an Admiralty Fire Control Table for anything but what it was designed for without rebuilding it). Once they're advanced enough, an early digital computer will be unable to compete, stifling further development.

In such a situation, for general computing, that messy biological stuff is the only way to go.
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Old 09-28-2020, 10:57 PM   #27
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Default Re: Justifying bioroids

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For bioroids to be feasible on a large scale, you basically need some jobs that aren’t appropriate for robots (possibly due to AI limitations) but that you have a shortage of willing and capable humans for (or that have been made illegal or similar, with bioroids able to do them thanks to a “not-actually-human” loophole).
Or they just have to be cheaper over their working life than robots.
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Old 09-29-2020, 12:30 AM   #28
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Default Re: Justifying bioroids

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There is essentially zero chance that the difference between a human womb and an exowomb that provides the same nutrients/etc can matter before the third trimester -- the sensory system isn't linked up yet. For the third trimester the odds aren't much better (though a noise generator might become useful), because learning mostly requires interaction, and it's not actually possible to interact with the environment before birth.
That is currently an unprovable statement. As for bioroid viability, bioroids can still be a viable technology without functional exowomb technology, they would just start from an embryo rather than an organism at a preferred level of development. Bioroid embryos could potentially be quite popular reproductive alternatives for couples that could not have children due to fear of a genetic disease, especially if they are capable of crossbreeding with normal humans/genetic upgrades, as they would be capable of producing human (and bioroid) grandchildren.

In my own opinion, bioroids would actually potentially less problematic than parahumans because they are not distinct species that can reproduce without technology (or humanity/human upgrades in the case of crossbreeding bioroids). Parahumans represent separate species, with a much further separation than humans and our archaic cousins, that would be potentially cause the biological extinction of standard humanity. They would likely be as much of a threat to the future of standard humanity as AIs, though they would usually be prettier.
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Old 09-29-2020, 03:21 AM   #29
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Default Re: Justifying bioroids

On the Wetware vs Hardware question...

A computer processor is just ludicrously good at math compared to a human brain, but that is in large part because brains were not optimized for doing math. If there was significant evolutionary pressure on being able to solve [2491^(7/3) = X] then brains would do it easily.

Something that naturally evolved will tend towards something of a "good enough" point, with most pressure being on traits which improve survival and reproduction. A Bioroid can be created with a purpose; just like an Hardware AI; and that means it can be highly optimized for said purpose.

If you simplify things the difference between a Sapient Hardware AI and a Sapient Biroid AI largely comes down to what they are built of. Meat or Metal. But heck, if you introduce metal nanomachines which can perform similar to cells - then you've basically removed the difference between them and the only real difference is in the details of how they are made.

F.ex. A "biological" ship made up of cells which are functionally nano-machines would for most intents and purposes be superior to your regular Star Trek ship. The cells could grow "skin" no different from regular ship hulls, they could form/build plasma weapons just like those on standard starships. And in addition to that it could heal damage or possibly even create new ships. Of course said "biological" ship would probably be described as a ultra-tech nanomachine-ship, unless it looked "meaty".

Point is: From a technological perspective you don't have to justify Bioroids. They can be absolutely anything you want. You could just as well ask yourself: what can an AI do that a Bioroid (or Cyborg) cannot?
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Old 09-29-2020, 03:41 AM   #30
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Default Re: Justifying bioroids

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For most of human history, children have been an investment that was likely to pay off in no more than a moderate time frame.
Only when the economy was or recently had been growing faster than the potential population growth. See Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus on the role of childhood starvation in equilibrating the labour market before the Demographic Transition.

Until the advent of effective and readily-available contraceptives and truthful sex education, people on the whole did not very effectually plan their families, and populations generally grew as fast as they could. Explanations of the Demographic Transition in terms of family-size choice are widely repeated, but want for evidence of widespread effectual family planning before contraception was available.
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