Why Germany Matters

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Brett

Why do you care? If a sock puppet can do heart surgery, give it a surgeon's licence.

Sure, and hundreds of [fake] cardiac surgeons expressing [criticism about] this procedure or recommending that drug should have no deleterious impact on people's attempts to make [informed] decisions about them.

The original issue was voting, and the hazards of creating fictitious voters should be obvious.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

True. Even if we don't automatically accept the "3 million" number - I'd be slightly happier with something a bit closer to to the pro rata 600,000

Hmmm. The problem with lowering the SAI population to that level is that it means that even much poorer nations with strong biases against SAI labor will still have an SAI population close to 1% of the entire population - or else the total SAI population of the solar system won't add up to 90-100 million. Personally, I'd expect the SAI population to be even more skewed towards the wealthiest nations, not less.

- SAI creation can't have been very strongly restricted for the population to get well up into the tens of millions in 34 years.

Assuming that most SAIs are created for a pre-defined purpose - which will surely be the case in places where they're treated as property, even if the situation in places where they're citizens is more complex - then presumably, over the years, various organisations (and wealthy individuals) have decided that it's worth having something fully self-aware running certain tasks (and not just a dull-witted LAI or NAI with a huge capacity for number-crunching or data-sorting). Traffic management of all sorts, inventory/librarian work, large vehicle ops, secretarial/PA functions? I'm guessing that, despite a tendency for PC and published SAI characters to be very idiosyncratic, individualised characters, many are really optimised for whatever tasks SAIs are uniquely well-suited to.

What SAIs are used for will depend on the nation in question, but the answer I am tending towards for Germany is that a very large number of the SAIs will be created as trainees (and eventual professionals) for engineering and the German vocational training system - areas in which Germany excels and where the kind of focus and attention to detail SAIs can provide will only benefit, but for which there is already a shortage of trainees. And since the German population of 2100 is much more aged than it is now, this problem will likely worsen. Thus, it is not inconceivable that the professional trade organizations of Germany (which I plan to write about) will commission lots of SAIs, especially if provided with generous subsidies by the German government (which is likely concerned about maintaining a skilled workforce as well).

[Jürgen Hubert]

I had the following thought:

Only a small number of German SAIs have shown any interest in reproduction. However, SAI reproduction is likely an evolutionary process similar to biological reproduction - those SAIs more inclined towards reproduction will likely have "offspring" who share the same drive. Which means that eventually, as the free SAI population rises, most SAIs will be those who want to reproduce.