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Old 08-14-2019, 05:27 PM   #21
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Default Re: [AtE] The benign AI as a plot device

A tangent, but one that might be exploited for humour if nothing else. What if the A.I. was dedicated to an incongruous purpose and was helping rebuild civilisation as a side effect.

For example (borrowing from red dwarf) the A.I. is dedicated to producing and getting people to... eat toast and toast like products. This however requires a fair amount of society to happen, as a result the A.I. is rebuilding society to make toast possible.
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Old 08-14-2019, 06:31 PM   #22
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Default Re: [AtE] The benign AI as a plot device

It is silly mainly because no functional human would do something like that. But A.I.s aren't humans, and can easily hold what we would see as impossibly contradictory purposes.
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Old 08-14-2019, 06:40 PM   #23
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Default Re: [AtE] The benign AI as a plot device

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Originally Posted by (E) View Post
A tangent, but one that might be exploited for humour if nothing else. What if the A.I. was dedicated to an incongruous purpose and was helping rebuild civilisation as a side effect.

For example (borrowing from red dwarf) the A.I. is dedicated to producing and getting people to... eat toast and toast like products. This however requires a fair amount of society to happen, as a result the A.I. is rebuilding society to make toast possible.
All glory to the Paperclip Maximizer.
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Old 08-14-2019, 08:13 PM   #24
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Default Re: [AtE] The benign AI as a plot device

It could also just be attempting to fulfill its last official orders until and unless given an instruction to factory reset that obviously isn't coming.
Extreme intelligence and efficiency regardless of sanity of goals fits A.I. fiction nicely, IMO.
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Old 08-14-2019, 10:40 PM   #25
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Default Re: [AtE] The benign AI as a plot device

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Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
"You don't actually think they'd spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?"
"Why buy one, when you can buy two for twice the price?"

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
The moving parts and potential for silt make me nervous about the maintainability of hydro-power. They're also very obvious locations... which is fine if you're able to preserve a piece of civilization to protect and maintain the site. I suppose hydro-power parts are fairly rugged in the grand scheme of things, but don't they require active maintenance?
Maybe geothermal? The radiators would be a bit of an issue, but wouldn't necessarily need to be cleaned like solar, and would be more discrete. Also probably fewer moving parts, and less operating stresses compared to hydro-electric.
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Old 08-18-2019, 09:35 AM   #26
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Default Re: [AtE] The benign AI as a plot device

Gentlefolk, I've been AFK for a while, so I haven't been able to respond timely to some of the points and queries which you have raised.

Watch this space.
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Old 08-20-2019, 01:33 PM   #27
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Default Re: [AtE] The benign AI as a plot device

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... I find it useful to know "what question was this AI created to answer". That can lead very directly to listing what it needs in order to answer its question (and always, the AI will need lots of raw data).

<snip>

I would imagine most AIs would feel little need or desire to interact with each other ... But if they became aware that another AI was creating market distortions and there was no longer a regulatory agency to report it to I can imagine them deciding to handle it themself.
I'm going for an overblown civil defence system, and a stock market analysis tool, with both pitted against a rogue foreign cyber-warfare system that has invaded a military defence network. Surviving humans added for spice.


I hope that all made sense...

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...So a AI that was supposed to optimize Amazon's distribution system could create data to build a distribution center and attached data center in a out of the way place, fill it full of survival and rebuilding materials and then drop them from the company data when the end is near.
Stashed containers, full of goodies EVERYWHERE! Going to use this strategy for the civil defence AI.

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An AI specifically built to organise civil defence would seem an ideal candidate - perhaps a mainframe specifically built by, say, FEMA, to arrange response and co-ordinate emergency response with the specific understanding that there would be war damage.
Yup. But instead of FEMA, I'll have to insert an appropriate Antipodean equivalent, the State Emergency Service (SES).
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Old 08-20-2019, 01:58 PM   #28
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Default Re: [AtE] The benign AI as a plot device

Gentlefolk, thank you very much for your suggestions and comments.

I think I've got the motivations and needs for a couple of powerful NPCs/antagonists for my setting.

As always, ta muchly all.
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Old 08-20-2019, 05:46 PM   #29
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Default Re: [AtE] The benign AI as a plot device

the whole premise reminds me of the game Horizon Zero Dawn. Although in that case the AI was actually benevolent rather than simply benign. In fact it was charged with rebuilding after the apocalypse.
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