Jobs for Ghost vs SAIs

[DAT]

I am working on an adventure setting, and could use some brainstorming help if folks are interested.

Consider you have a human sized cybershell you need to go do a job at a remote site, so you won’t be able to give it direct/real time guidance.

What kinds of situations/jobs would it make more sense to send a Ghost to do versus a SAI?

• Unknown (i.e., you are unsure of the conditions, and it may require creative solutions)
• Social (i.e., lots of human interactions, carousing/fast-talk/diplomacy/streetwise)
• Legal Gray Area (i.e., anything that might make the SAI’s honesty be an issue)
• None (i.e., can send either, no appreciable benefit to a Ghost over a SAI)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DAT

What kinds of situations/jobs would it make more sense to send a Ghost to do versus a SAI?

You have a ghost with a better skill set for the job than you have an SAI. There isn't enough inherent difference in capabilities to provide a strong reason beyond that.

[Dr. Beckenstein]

- If you have to use a human sized shell, the mission will probably take place at a human sized location - space stations, wrecks (space or ocean), ghost towns etc. - where other sized shells would be at a disadvantage.

- Maybe the situation is similar to something the ghost has experienced in his "past" life. "The serial killer slaughtered four prostitutes on Titan. Transmit agent Jones 2.0 to a shell there, he always got his being."

[Phil Masters]

Most of the time, you'll send what you've got. SAIs are expensive, and ghosts generally have the right to choose what jobs they take, so you won't always have an unlimited choice. SAIs can in principle be trained with unlimited skills, and have built-in bullet time reactions (though ghosts could have those modeled in), so logically there could well be an SAI that's better at any and every job -- but that doesn't mean one will always be available.

Also, a ghost could have specific experience of archaic or unusual technologies, particular people, or whatever. And ghosts are based on human brains, which can have (in game terms) a wild range of IQ levels and peculiar Talents; finding a ghost with the same capabilities could be difficult or expensive.

Also, if you're sending your infomorph into a situation where it may have to enter into legally binding contracts, you want to send one with the greatest possible legal rights in that location. Property can't usually enter into contracts.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Property can't usually enter into contracts.

It usually can't attempt to either, so this is an area I expect will need quite a bit of evolution of the law. Even now if give out your credit card number over the phone or online, it's generally considered that you authorized the charge, even though there is no evidence it wasn't an independent action on the part of your telephone. The issue of what you are responsible for when your kids bill your credit card, or how long remote sites or automatic payment systems can assume your authorization to bill you is valid for are stuff that's been in the courts and before legislatures repeatedly in the last three decades.

I'd assume by the time SAIs have been around a few decades that there is some formal legal mechanism you could authorize them to make at least small transactions for you in a legally binding way - nobody wants to have to jump through hoops to prove you *aren't* an SAI when you order groceries, but nobody wants to ship stuff only to have you refuse to pay because the contract wasn't binding either.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Also, if you're sending your infomorph into a situation where it may have to enter into legally binding contracts, you want to send one with the greatest possible legal rights in that location. Property can't usually enter into contracts.

If you're 'sending' someone or something, you're authorizing it to act on your behalf, so what matters is whether you can enter contracts, not whether your agent can do so.

[Astromancer]

Ghosts, especially in bioshells, are better for "people" oriented jobs. Largely because they were people.

Remembering an episode of Deep Space 9, there was the idea of creating a holodoctor who would be a long term care provider, as opposed to an emergency medic like the Holodoctor on ST: Voyager. A Ghost medic that used a variety of bioshells to attend their patients makes good sense in this setting.

[vicky_molokh]

Everything seems to boil down to these things:

• Legal concerns. Things that cannot be legally delegated to a SAI. Like oversight over a temporally accepted but unlicensed shooter at a range in some jurisdictions. Or a job that requires being in a bioshell within the EU.
• Client preference. Similar to the above, but you can cheat.
• Mental requirements impossible or hard to meet by SAIs. Talents seem hard to design in AIs; some Cabal systems only work with uploads but not AIs; high IQ seems expensive on AIs.
• Hardware efficiency. A SAI is one Complexity bigger/harder than a Ghost with the same IQ. That's ten times the hardware requirements. This can be a big deal both for small shells and for big servers, albeit in somewhat different ways.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

• Mental requirements impossible or hard to meet by SAIs. Talents seem hard to design in AIs; some Cabal systems only work with uploads but not AIs; high IQ seems expensive on AIs.
• Hardware efficiency. A SAI is one Complexity bigger/harder than a Ghost with the same IQ. That's ten times the hardware requirements. This can be a big deal both for small shells and for big servers, albeit in somewhat different ways.

So how long before someone "solves" the problem of ghost vs. SAI by creating bioroids for the sole purpose of brainpeeling them?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by TGLS

So how long before someone "solves" the problem of ghost vs. SAI by creating bioroids for the sole purpose of brainpeeling them?

Presumably there's a technical reason why that doesn't work or isn't cost effective (most likely, giving the bioroid the training to be better than a SAI costs as much as just boosting the capabilities of the SAI).